Taiwanese Pepper Chicken

A Chinese buffet opened up recently near us. I love buffets especially when it comes to Chinese food. I always want a little bit of everything. But most Chinese food restaurants serve their dishes in family style platters. So we end up ordering around 5 different dishes and then come home with enough left-overs to feed a seven nation army. Anyhow, we decided to try out the new buffet on father's day and we ended up trying a new dish we had never had before: pepper chicken. We loved it so much, I knew I had to come home and try to recreate it. Well, after a few weeks, I had actually forgotten all about it. Then, like a sign from the universe, I stumbled across a recipe for Taiwanese salt and pepper pork while I was browsing the Food board on Reddit. The recipe looked really similar to the chicken we had so I used it as inspiration for this chicken dish. I should note that the dish we had at the restaurant had green bell peppers in it. I didn't happen to have any bell peppers when I made this. But I did have some jalapeño peppers from my garden and, since this family has a pathological love of all things spicy, I thought it would make a decent substitute!

Taiwanese Pepper Chicken
Makes: 4 servings

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 egg
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp flour
3 tbsp corn starch
2 tsp cracked black pepper, divided
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 red chili pepper, sliced
1 jalapeño pepper, sliced
canola oil for frying

  

• Fill a stainless steel pan with 1" of oil. Preheat oil over medium-medium-high heat.
• Cut the chicken breasts into 1" cubes.
• Mix together the egg, soy sauce, and 1 tsp of the cracked pepper.
• Toss the chicken in the egg mixture.
• Add the flour and corn starch. Toss to coat.
• Fry the chicken in the oil for about 3 - 4 minutes until it is golden brown and cooked through. You'll probably need to do this in two batches so you don't overcrowd the pan.

• Remove the chicken from the oil and set aside.
• Allow the oil to cool and then transfer it to a holding container so that you can dispose of it later. Reserve about 2 tbsp of the oil in the pan.
• In the reserved oil, saute the garlic and peppers until fragrant, about 1 minute. Then add the remaining 1 tsp of cracked pepper.

• Toss the chicken in the garlic and pepper mixture. Serve with rice and vegetables.

Note: if you don't have an electric spice grinder (I don't!) then it will take you an incredible amount of time to grind up the amount of black pepper needed for this recipe. You're definitely going to feel the burn in your arms. But... it's worth it! I promise!

Chicken & Vegetables in Thai Peanut Sauce

Peanut sauce is one of the easiest sauces you can make. It's a raw sauce - no cooking required. And it's literally just a combination of peanut butter, water, soy sauce, and a few other goodies. I like to add this to some noodles with stir-fry vegetables and some chicken. I used carrots, celery, and onions because that's what I happened to have on hand. You could also use pea pods, mushrooms, asparagus, water chestnuts, or even a bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables! You can also leave out the chicken for Meatless Mondays. This also makes a great make-ahead lunch for the week!

Chicken & Vegetables in Thai Peanut Sauce
Makes: 4 servings

1/2 lb spaghetti, lo mein noodles, or ramen noodles
1 boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into 1/2" cubes
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 medium onion, cut into 1/2" dice
8 scallions
2 tbsp canola oil or vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, very finely minced (or 1/2 tsp garlic powder)
1 tsp fresh grated ginger (or 1/2 tsp dried, ground ginger)
3/4 cup hot water
1/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce

• Cook the spaghetti until al dente, about 9 - 10 minutes. Make sure to salt the water well.
• Strain the pasta.
• While the pasta is cooking, cut the chicken into 1/2" cubes.
• Chop the carrots, celery, and onions. Set aside.
• Slice the scallions, add the white part to the carrots, celery, and onions; set aside the green tops for garnish.
•  Heat the oil in a skillet over medium high. Add the carrots, celery, and onion mixture. Cook for about 3 minutes until the vegetables just start to soften.
• Add the chicken to the skillet and continue cooking for 5 - 6 minutes until the vegetables are cooked and the chicken is cooked through and no longer pink. Remove from the heat.
• Make the sauce by combining the garlic, ginger, water, peanut butter, and soy sauce. It's true that you can use powdered garlic and ginger, but I highly recommend using fresh. There's just nothing like fresh ginger. Whisk the ingredients together - the sauce will have a lumpy texture at first, just keep whisking and it will smooth out.
• Add the sauce to the hot chicken and vegetables. Add the pasta then toss it all together.
• Garnish with the green scallion tops.

If you want to make the sauce a little spicy, you could add some Sriracha sauce.

Honey Lime Chicken

This is another one of those recipes that I just kind of pulled out of thin air. I wasn't sure what to make for dinner so I looked around to see what we had. Honey and lime are a pretty classic flavor combination. You see it a lot in southwestern dishes as well as Thai dishes. I went more in the Asian direction with this one and it was yummy! I made this with chicken breasts, but you could also use chicken thighs or even chicken wings.

Honey Lime Chicken

Makes: 4 servings

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup corn starch

1/2 tsp salt

Marinade:

2 tbsp lime juice

3 tbsp honey

1 clove garlic, finely minced

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp sambal oelek or chili garlic sauce

• Combine the lime juice, honey, garlic, soy sauce, and chili sauce. Set aside.
• Cut each of the chicken breasts in half length-wise so that you have four thin chicken breasts.
• Pour half of the marinade into a plastic bag with the chicken and marinate it for 10 - 30 minutes. You don't really want to do more than 30 minutes with an acidic marinade like this because it will make the chicken mushy.

• While the chicken in marinating, combine the flour, cornstarch, and salt. Set aside.
• Remove the chicken from the marinade, then toss in the flour mixture. You want just a very thin coating on the chicken. This is going to create a thin, delicate crust.
• Deep fry the chicken at 350° F for 3 - 5 minutes total until deep brown and cooked through. Or cook in a heavy bottomed skillet filled with 1/2" of oil on medium heat for 3 - 4 minutes per side.
• Remove the chicken from the oil and allow to rest.
• While the chicken is resting, heat the other half of the marinate in a small sauce pan over medium heat for 4 - 5 minutes until the sauce bubbles and just starts to thicken. Remove from the heat.
• Plate the chicken then spoon some of the sauce over each piece. There will only be a very small amount of sauce but it's strong stuff so it will be plenty for four pieces of chicken.
• Serve the chicken over white rice, brown rice, rice pilaf, couscous, or quinoa. This dish pairs really well with some bok choy that has been chopped, sauteed until al dente, then tossed with just a little bit of soy sauce.

This was great as is but I can't wait to try it on the grill. I think it will be even more delicious!

Asian Wings Two Ways

Matt and I love chicken wings. Whenever we eat them, I'll make half with buffalo sauce and half with some other kind of sauce. Because you can't make wings without at least some of them being buffalo style. I'm pretty sure that's sacrilege. The "other" half of the wings are usually something sweet like sweet chili, teriyaki, barbecue, etc. A few nights ago I was in the mood to try making my own sauce. So, I thought I'd give it a try!

The Wings:
I actually prefer to bake my wings. Which may seem weird, but I've actually found that they come out crispier when I bake them versus deep frying them.

15 chicken wings cut into separate wingettes and drumettes (30 pieces total)
Cooking spray

• Preheat oven to 375° F.
• Lay chicken wings in a single layer on a baking sheet then spray with a very thin layer of cooking spray. This will help make the wings crispy.
• Bake for 45 minutes.

If you're unfamiliar with separating chicken wings, here's a quick tutorial you can watch: How to Cut & Separate Chicken Wings into Sections for Buffalo Wings
Bonus: the guy's glasses are pretty epic. Enjoy.

Chinese Five Spice Wings:

These are actually so simple I'm almost embarrassed to call it a recipe. It's really more of an idea for a flavor combination than it is a recipe. Anyway, here you go:

1/2 Tsp Chinese Five Spice
10 Chicken wings (5 wingettes, 5 drumettes)

• In a large bowl, toss the cooked wings in Chinese Five Spice as soon as they come out of the oven.
• There is no second step. I just wanted another bullet point.
• I guess the next step could be to eat them. Yes. Eat them. Eaaat themmmmm.

Hoisin Glazed Wings:

If you've never had hoisin sauce, it's sometimes referred to as Chinese barbecue sauce. Though it tastes nothing like barbecue sauce. But you can use it in the same applications and it's relatively sweet. You can find it almost anywhere in the Asian section. I got mine at Walmart.

2 Tbsp Hoisin sauce

2 Tbsp soy sauce

2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar

1 Tbsp honey

10 Chicken wings (5 wingettes, 5 drumettes)

• In a large bowl, whisk together the Hoisin, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and honey.
• Toss the wings in the sauce as soon as they come out of the oven.
• Return the wings to the baking sheet and bake for another 5 minutes.

What to do with the other 10 chicken wings? Toss them in buffalo sauce!!!