Gang Bao Chicken

Submitted by Jewelies

"I have tried and tried for years to get this recipe from my favourite Chinese Szechuan Restaurant and there it is in today's newspaper!!! We have even had a Recipezaar get togethers to try and pick the ingredients! From Double Eight Chinese Restaurant in Broadbeach. Thanks to Joan and John Mei. Can also be called Kung Pao Chicken or Gong Bao Chicken but I have gone with the original restaurant name."

 

• Ready In: 20mins
• Ingredients: 12
• Serves: 2

ingredients

• 1⁄2 tablespoon chili oil
• 300 g chicken thigh fillets, diced
• 1 tablespoon dried red chili (or fresh but the restaurant uses dried)
• 2 green onions, chopped
• 1⁄2 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 2 -6 tablespoons stock (the recipe states several) or 2 -6 tablespoons water (the recipe states several)
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Chinese wine
• 1⁄2 tablespoon light soy sauce
• 1⁄3 cup cashew nuts (or peanuts)

directions

1. Coat wok or pan in chilli oil.
2. Add chicken pieces and stir until just cooked and set aside.
3. Into wok or pan add chilli, green onion, ginger, garlic, vinegar, stock or water and stir.
4. Add sugar, cooking wine and light soy sauce and stir.
5. It's really important here to make sure that everything reduces and caramelises. The restaurants green onions and dried chilli's are quite well cooked.
6. Return chicken to the pan and mix ingredients together.
7. When juice becomes slightly sticky add the nuts.
8. Place in serving dish.

Reviews

[MelvinsWifey]

Goodness gracious this was soooo tasty! I made a few changes b/c of what I had on hand. I used red pepper flakes, and also a lot more ginger than called for b/c we really like ginger. I more than doubled the sauce ingredients so I just mixed a bit of cornstarch in with the broth before adding it. I also used rice vinegar and didn't have any chinese wine. Unfortunately we did not have any nuts but I'm sure it would have been AMAZING with the nuts in there. I also added some chopped red onion and celery pieces at the very end - leaving them semi crunchy and they really added a lot to the dish. The thigh meat was so tasty and just like chinese takeout. I served it over white rice and drizzled a lot of the sauce on the rice. Can't wait to eat leftovers tomorrow, thanks for an easy recipe!

 

[PalatablePastime]

WOW! This was fabulous! The best recipe from Zaar that we have yet tried! Funny, while trying to decide what to rate, it sounded like an auction, with each person voting even higher! To be sold, this would well go above five stars. 10? 20? Absolutely celestial!!! And the best home cooked Chinese we have had in years. Thank you.

 

[Captain Apollo]

This was very good - I doubled the sauce ingredients and added snow peas and bamboo shoots towards the end for some veg. Nice and easy too - I'll definitely make again.

 

[Pot Scrubber]

This is the best Kung Pao I've had in years. I like my dishes saucy so I tripled the sauce ingredients using 18 TBS (approx 1 cup) of chicken stock which I thickened in the end with cornstarch. For the chilies I used 1 tsp of dried pepper flakes (like the pizza topping kind) and it was spicy but not tongue numbing. SO other said this was the best Asian dinner I have ever made! If you want a real treat use 1 lb of shrimp instead of chicken. I can't tell you enough how thrilled I am with this recipe. Thanks, Jewelies.

 

[LARavenscroft]

Made for Aus/NZ Make My Recipe Edition 5 Tag. We didn't really care for this. It was pretty spicy (we normally like spicy) and there really wasn't much sauce (we like a lot of sauce). This doesn't mean the recipe was bad, it just didn't suit our tastes.