6-Ingredient Chinese Chicken: Easy Chinese Chicken Recipes for Dinner with Few Ingredients (2024)

FAQs

What is the most popular Chinese chicken dish? ›

Kung Pao Chicken

It is a popular dish in both China and the West. Kung Pao Chicken is a popular Chinese dish that originates from the Sichuan province. It is a stir-fry dish made with diced chicken, peanuts, vegetables, and a flavorful sauce.

Chinese stir-fried chicken is extra tender due to the velveting technique. Chicken is sliced into thin, even-sized pieces and then marinated briefly in a mix of baking soda, cornstarch, wine, and seasoning. This seals in moisture and tenderizes the chicken.

Chinese restaurants almost always use chicken breast for chicken and broccoli because most Americans prefer white meat. However, if you prefer dark meat, you can use chicken thighs to make a delicious homemade dark meat chicken broccoli with brown sauce.

Sweet and sour chicken, one of the most popular Chinese takeout dishes, is made of puffy, golden brown pieces of fried chicken nuggets with pineapple chunks, onion, bell pepper, carrot, and a side of iconic red, sweet and sour sauce.

Hotpot was the number one Chinese dish most people were likely to consume in 2020, according to a survey in China. China's Szechuan Cuisine is most famous for its spicy and pungent flavors. It is most loved in the West and makes up more than 5% of the Chinese restaurants in the US.

Marinating your chicken in something overnight can help make it all the more juicier and tender. You can use a gluten-free, acidic marinade (like olive oil and lemon juice) or something breadier (like baking soda, egg whites, and buttermilk).

This is how to tenderise beef with a Chinese restaurant method called “velveting beef”. Also used for chicken, it's a simple, highly effective technique using baking soda that transforms economical beef so it's incredibly tender in stir fries and stir fried noodles.

Low and slow cooking methods like braising, stewing, or smoking are most effective when trying to create tender, succulent chicken.

Basically, the most common American-Chinese Cantonese sauce (like for beef and broccoli) is almost always Oyster Sauce, Soy sauce, Corn Starch, sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, Chicken/Pork/Beef stock and optionally sesame oil. Many people add additional MSG powder to the sauce.

In this blog post, we'll explore some of the most popular types of Chinese sauces, including soy sauce, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, and more. From sweet and tangy to rich and savory, Chinese sauces are a crucial component of many dishes, and can completely transform the taste of a meal.

What is hoisin sauce used for? ›

Hoisin sauce is a thick, fragrant sauce commonly used in Cantonese cuisine as a glaze for meat, an addition to stir fry, or as dipping sauce. It is dark-coloured, sweet and salty. Although regional variants exist, hoisin sauce usually includes soybeans, fennel, red chili peppers, and garlic.

In a medium saucepan, combine pineapple juice, rice vinegar, brown sugar, ketchup, and soy sauce and bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir in cornstarch slurry and cook until thickened, about 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from heat and use immediately or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Basically, the sauce is what distinguishes one flavor from the others, so when making orange chicken, the sauce base is orange juice, with lemon, lemonade, pineapple, pineapple juice, and sweet and sour is tomato sauce or juice and vinegar and sugar or honey.

Sweet and sour pork is a Chinese dish particularly popular in westernised Cantonese cuisine and may be found all over the world. Several provinces in China produce various dishes that claim to be the ancestor including a traditional Jiangsu dish called “pork in a sugar and vinegar sauce” (糖醋里脊; pinyin: táng cù lǐjǐ).

Butter chicken, also known as Murgh Makhani, has recently claimed the top spot in the "Top 100 Chicken Dishes in the World" list by TasteAtlas, (an online guide for traditional food) solidifying its place as a global culinary sensation.

General Tso's is sweeter with a milder spice, featuring deep-fried battered chicken. Kung Pao is spicier with stir-fried chicken, vegetables, and peanuts. Also, General Tso's has Chinese-American roots, while Kung Pao hails from Sichuan cuisine.

Chinese Amazing Chicken is usually prepared by marinating the chicken in a mixture of soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. The chicken is then stir-fried or pan-fried until it is cooked through. It is often garnished with green onions and sesame seeds for added flavor and presentation.

You might be surprised to learn that General Tso's chicken, a staple on Chinese-American menus, is almost entirely foreign to people who live in the country from which it supposedly originated. While the dish isn't exactly authentic Chinese food, its namesake was a very real (and very powerful) general.