Ingredients:

Marinade:

Chicken

Dark Soy Sauce

Cooking wine

White Pepper Powder

Sugar

Salt

Egg

Sweet potato starch

Rapeseed Oil (peanut oil if you can’t find rapeseed oil)

Stir Fry:

Rapeseed Oil (peanut oil if you can’t find rapeseed oil) + Lard (optional)

Sichuan Peppercorns

Dried Chilis (Mix of xiao-mi-la and zi-dan-tou with ratio depending on desired spice)

Ginger

Garlic

Pixian Doubanjiang (Broad bean paste)

Hotpot flavor brick

Chinese Aged Vinegar (any chinese looking dark vinegar works)

Regular/Light Soy Sauce

Green onions

Sugar

Cooking Steps:

Prep/Mise en Place:

1. Start making rice
2. Cut 4-5 dried red chilis into halves and put in a prep bowl (denoted prep bowl 1). Discard 3/4 of the seeds that fall out
3. Mince 3-4 cloves of garlic and a roughly equal amount of ginger, and put into prep bowl 1.
4. Dice 2-3 green onions, and in a separate Prep Bowl 2 put the white-looking portions of the green onions into one half. Put the green sections of the green onion in the other half of Prep Bowl 2.
5. Cut a 1x1 or 1x2 inch section of hotpot brick and keep ready somewhere (prep bowl not really needed for this)

Marination (~5 mins if you’re fast):

1. Dice chicken into 0.5-0.75 inch pieces (this recipe corresponds to 1 costco chicken packet) and place into a mixing bowl
2. Pour/add a good amount of dark soy sauce into the mixing bowl, this will roughly be a tablespoon or 1.5 tablespoons depending on chicken.
   Note: You can add less now and correct the color later, you want the color after mixing (without the starch) to be same shade of brown as un-roasted coffee-beans
3. Add 3/4 a small spoon of salt into mixing bowl
   Note: see supplemental 1 for picture of spoon
4. Add 3/4 a small spoon of sugar
5. Add 3/4 a small spoon of white pepper powder
6. Add a cap-full of Shaoxing cooking wine (the cap of the bottle)
7. Add an egg
8. Mix thoroughly to break up the egg and incorporate all of the ingredients
9. Add sweet potato starch. Amount depends on the moisture of the chicken and other ingredients you added. This will be around 2 tablespoons
10. Mix thoroughly with your fingers splayed open, occasionally closing ur hand to turn the mixture over while mixing.
11. Add more starch after mixing if the space in between chicken is still clear marinade instead of starchy-sludge. Test consistency of chicken by picking some up and letting it flow down through your fingers. The consistency of the chicken should be thicker than normal but still flowing down smoothly.
    Note:  see supplemental 2 for technique. This is very important since it breaks up the starch well
12. Put your cooking wok onto the stove and turn it on high (prepping for stir fry)
13. Add some oil (1.5-2 tablespoons) TO THE MIXING BOWL NOT THE WOK and loosely mix. This is to prevent the chicken from clumping while stir frying

Stir Fry (~5 mins):

1. Once the wok starts smoking, put a good amount of oil. This depends on the shape of your wok but you want to basically be shallow frying the chicken. Optionally add a half spoon of lard and mix to dissolve.disso
2. Let the oil start to almost smoke, then put in the chicken bit by bit.
   Note: You want to put the chicken in the wok handful at a time, making sure to put the chicken on exposed oil. If you’re too slow with this though, the chicken will cook unevenly so be fast. Make sure the chicken is as spread out as possible so that as much hot oil is in contact.
3. Do not stir the chicken.
4. After 30s or so, after the chicken in contact with the oil is cooked +browned and the top is still kinda raw, put in 1/4 handful sichuan peppercorns onto a spot with exposed oil.
5. Flip the chicken trying to preserve the crust as much as possible and divide up the pieces that stick together. Also try to get the undercooked sides to touch the oil as much as possible. Loosely loosely stir.
6. 10s after flipping add Prep Bowl 1 (garlic ginger chilis). Stir until the aroma is released
7. Take the wok off the heat. Add a heaping spoon of chili bean paste. Stir until the color of your chicken changes
8. Put wok back on the heat and stir a little more, around 5 seconds for this step to fully release oil. You don’t want to burn the chili bean paste.
9. Take wok back off the heat, and add hotpot brick section. Stir to dissolve/break the chunk up and mix it with the chicken.
10. Put wok back on the heat, and after 5-10s add a small splash of vinegar to the wok
    Note: Chinese technique for ‘splashes’ is to add the liquid to your spatula and then use the spatula to splash/disperse into the wok
11. Immediately add a small splash of light soy sauce to the wok
12. Stir quickly for 5-10s
13. Add white half of prep bowl 2 (green onions) and stir for 5-10s
14. Add green half of prep bowl 2 and stir for 5s
15. Add a small sprinkle of sugar and stir for 1-2s
16. Take wok off heat.

Note: if chicken is overcooked /not tender you weren’t fast enough with adding ingredients in stir-fry. This will come through practice.