My 7-year-old daughter after she finished eating this chicken for lunch said “Daddy, the chicken was so!… so!… so!…” She was overwhelmed with emotions and had a hard time finding the right word to describe how good she thought the chicken tasted. I get compliments on my cooking very regularly, but that one was very special to me. I agree, the chicken was superb. A perfection.
My favorite meat for making Hunan chicken is breast meat. When cooked right, it tastes much better than red chicken meat. It’s less fatty and healthier too. To cook the chicken I suggest using a wok. A while ago I bought a Korean made non-stick, flat bottom wok (it’s very similar to this one) to cook Asian dishes. I came to love that wok so much that I use it for practically everything that needs pan frying. I even fry sunny-side up eggs in it. Everything just comes out better in it. It’s a magical wok. I cut chicken breasts into about 1-inch pieces, lay them in one layer inside the wok and cook them over a fairly high heat on one side for about 1 minute until nicely caramelized, then flip to the other side and cook for another minute or so, undisturbed. I then continue stir-frying until the temperature inside the largest pieces reaches 160F. An instant read thermometer comes really handy here. As soon as the chicken is ready I dump it onto a large ceramic platter to cool down. This way I get the meat that is perfectly cooked, tender and juicy.
Unlike for example in Szechuan Chicken recipe, or the Hunan Beef recipe, I used neither the deep-frying nor the shallow-frying methods to cook the Hunan chicken. This time I only used 2 tablespoons of peanut oil. To my surprise, that turned out to be plenty enough. I really like this method because it’s much more economical and adds a lot less fat into the food.
