Chicken with Sichuan Pepper and Peanuts

How to fry the chicken

1. This is a quick Chinese-style dish that is perfect for a good dinner. Cooking it is a pleasure, and it is not difficult at all, with all the ingredients easy to find. It is best to use parts of the chicken with plenty of meat: thighs or drumsticks are ideal. Breast fillet is a little dry, but more sauce solves the problem. Use plenty of sweet and hot pepper in the dish. You can use dried hot pepper too, after soaking it.

   

2. Prepare the chicken: remove the skin from the thighs, since it is not needed in this dish, and cut out the bone. Cut the meat into several pieces, usually three or four, so they are easy to eat with chopsticks. Before frying, coat the pieces well in cornstarch.

   Chicken for dishes like this is often marinated, but I rely more on the fried pieces soaking up the spicy sauce. Do not use potato starch: for me it always gives a smell of fried potatoes.

   

3. Fry the chicken. Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or regular frying pan over medium-high heat. Sesame or peanut oil is best, but plain oil or a mix of oils will do. The oil should get really hot, until it smells fragrant and crackles. Then carefully add the starch-coated chicken pieces. Turning them, fry on all sides until a golden crust appears, then move the chicken to a plate.

   

How to cook the peppers and peanuts

1. If you use dried chili, shake the seeds out of the pods beforehand and soak it in hot water for 30 mins. The type and heat of the chili are up to you.

2. Fry the garlic, chili and peanuts. Peel the garlic, seed the hot pepper and chop them with a knife, not necessarily very finely. Fry the garlic and chili in the remaining oil over medium heat for 1-2 mins. Then add the peeled raw peanuts and fry everything together until the peanuts start to turn golden. It is quick, just 2-3 mins.

   

3. Fry the bell pepper with the Sichuan pepper. Seed the fresh bell pepper (I like green best) and cut it into thick strips. Add it to the pan and fry until the pieces are soft and release moisture. Add 1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorns. This is an important component of the dish, giving it flavor and aroma.

   

   Sichuan pepper (花椒) is a flavoring that is very spicy and pleasantly tingles the tongue. It has nothing to do with pepper in the literal sense: it is the dried fruit of the prickly ash tree, zanthoxylum, often called Chinese coriander. The whole peppercorns go in with the vegetables as they fry, and the ground pepper goes in the sauce. By the way, this amount is not much. When we make fried peanuts, we add even more Sichuan pepper.

4. Simmer the peppers with the chicken. Reduce the heat and simmer the peppers under a lid for 4-5 mins. Put the fried chicken pieces on top of the stewed peppers and simmer everything together under a lid over low heat for another 5 mins. You don’t have to stir.

   

How to make the sauce

1. While the chicken soaks up the aroma and flavor of the Sichuan pepper, make the sauce.

2. Mix the sauce. In a cup or small bowl, mix 3-4 tbsp of light soy sauce with 1 tbsp of rice vinegar. Add 0.5 tbsp of brown sugar (7 g) or honey (also a good option) and 0.5 tsp of ground Sichuan pepper. If you like, add chili flakes: they won’t have time to make the sauce hot, but you will taste them in the finished dish. Mix the sauce well and wait for the sugar to dissolve.

3. Pour the finished sauce into the pan with the chicken and peppers and stir well.

   

4. Simmer the Sichuan pepper chicken under a lid over low heat until the meat absorbs the sauce and it starts to thicken thanks to the starch used for frying the chicken. When the sauce is about as thick as thick honey, add 1-2 tsp of white sesame seeds (3–7 g) and stir.

Serving

1. The dish is ready. All that is left is to plate it and serve.

   

   If you decide to use chicken breast fillet instead of dark meat, make more sauce so the dish turns out juicy. As for the heat, Sichuan dishes are generally hot and spicy, so don’t hold back. There are many dried peppers of different heat levels on sale. You can even use Mexican varieties, which is fine for home cooking. Sichuan pepper is available in different forms, so look for it.