Sunday, 8 April 2012

Kung Pao Chicken


Not another Chinese-inspired dish I hear you cry! Yes, I'm afraid so. 

Kung Pao is one of my favourite things to order at the Chinese although I do normally go for prawns rather than chicken. This wasn't like the Kung Pao dish I buy at all as that is normally red, like sweet'n'sour but it was still lipsmackingly tasty. A little too much so. I'm sure my chilli flakes were an extra hot variety as my lips were on FIRE and I was quite conservative with how much I put in. Mr M didn't find it too hot so perhaps I was just having a moment. Anyway, the ice cold glass of Irn Bru I dipped them into helped bring the trout pout down a bit.

The sauce was really flavoursome and after all the initial prep, this was really simple to put together. I'm pretty sure we'll make it lots of times in the future. 

Kung Pao Chicken

Ingredients

400g skinless chicken breasts, diced
1 tbsp cornflour
2 tsp sesame oil
3 tbsp spring onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
1/2 tsp ground ginger
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp sugar
75g dry roasted peanuts

Method

Pop the diced chicken and the cornflour into a bowl and toss well to coat all over.

Heat the sesame oil in a wok over a medium heat. Add the chicken and stir-fry gently for around 8 minutes or until it is cooked through. Remove from the wok and put to one side.

Tip the spring onions, garlic, chilli flakes and ginger into the work and stir-fy for gently for about a minute.  
In a bowl, mix the rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sugar. Stir well and then add to the wok before adding the chicken back to the pan and coating thoroughly with the sauce. Stir in the peanuts and heat through. 


Serve with white rice and top with some chopped spring onions.

This to me, is perfect weekend food! 

I don't know about anyone else but I always struggle to find the peanuts I need in most shops but finally located some dry roasted (unsalted) peanuts in Waitrose.

Writing this blog post has made me very hungry, might have to cook this again soon!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing it looks lovely xxx

    ReplyDelete
  2. That looks great. I make a Kung Pao Chicken to Yan Kit So's recipe and it always looks a lot like this. After reading the description in the book, it now really annoys me when you see it served with cashews as it should be peanuts. I (inauthentically) though add peppers to it for some more veg.

    ReplyDelete
  3. mmmm... so yummy! don't know which one choose because the honey one looks amazing too!!!

    ReplyDelete

I always like to hear your thoughts, so please do leave a comment!