![]() Where to get it: Xiang La Hui in Alhambra, California, has a good version, along with SzechuanHouse in Flushing, Queens. Sauce: Seasoning comes less from a sauce and more from the other dry elements, like whole fried chiles and peppercorns, which add both spicy heat and numbing taste.Īccompaniments: Other Sichuan dishes or white rice. Marinade: Soy sauce or salt, rice wine or Shaoxing wine, ginger, crushed white onion.įry: Wok-fried twice for maximum crispiness, first at a lower temperature to cook through for three to four minutes, then three to four minutes for a second time. Parts: For Chongqing fried chicken, chicken thighs chopped into small pieces. (In Sichuan cuisine, mala is the combined spice from peppercorns and chiles that creates both the prickly numbing and fiery capsaicin sensations.) The resulting chopstick-ready bites are crisp umami bombs that are very “ma” numbing but not quite “la” spicy. In southwestern China, Chongqing-style chicken is marinated in Shaoxing wine, with intense flavors melded together with garlic, green onions, whole dried chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, ginger, and chile flakes all thrown into the frying oil. Sichuan chicken with fixings at Xiang La Hui. In LA, try the orange chicken from the newly renovated Broadway Cuisine (formerly Plum Tree Inn) in Chinatown. Sometimes orange chicken is a variant, served at Panda Express in virtually every major shopping mall. Where to get it: General Tso’s is widely available at American Chinese restaurants. It’s reduced before being tossed with the fried chicken for that signature auburn-tinted look. Sauce: The sticky sauce frequently stars the same ingredients as the marinade but with garlic and ginger added to hot oil before the liquids are added to a wok or skillet. The marinade includes garlic, ginger, soy sauce, hoisin, sugar, sesame oil, chile, and vinegar for a sweet-spicy-tangy mixture that seasons the chicken prior to cooking.īatter or breading: Wet from the marinade, the chicken pieces are coated in cornstarch, which helps retain a light level of crunch.įry: Often fried in a wok with ample oil in small batches. Marinade: Both the sauce and marinade work together to flavor the chicken. Parts: Thigh or breast typically chopped into small, bite-size pieces. In China, the variety of fried chicken is as vast as the country’s regional cuisines, but two overall styles are most readily found stateside. Chen says the smaller pieces cook quicker and more evenly in woks, which tend to have lower oil temperatures than dedicated deep fryers. The typical Americanized Chinese restaurant makes heavily battered chicken pieces, often covered in a sweet, tangy, and sometimes spicy sauce. Think of Panda Express’s iconic orange chicken or General Tso’s recipe, found at myriad Chinese restaurants in the U.S. and a breakdown of the differences between each, in broad swaths, from the finger-sticking sauces of Chinese and Korean chicken wings to the sambal-smashed pieces I devoured in Indonesia.Īccording to Luther Bob Chen, founder of Luther Bob’s fried chicken, a takeout and delivery-only restaurant in Los Angeles, Chinese cuisines tend to use small, bite-size pieces of chicken that lack the bone because they cook better, though there are certainly exceptions. Here is a look at the various styles of Asian fried chicken found in cities across the U.S. Expanding beyond the classic Southern or Midwestern fried chicken styles, these Asian versions offer sweet or spicy sauces and a variety of different textures and coatings to add color, heat, and crunch to America’s pastiche of fried chicken excellence. ![]() From the battered nibs of Taiwanese popcorn chicken fried with basil to Japan’s delicately seasoned karaage to the national obsession of South Korea - lacquered, spicy, sticky-sauced hunks, all of it is packed with crispy-crunchy flavor, and all of it is prime for washing down with a brisk lager.Ĭhicken is a common thread among most of the notable cuisines of Southeast and East Asia, and almost all of these versions can be found in the U.S., where they have reshaped the American notion of what fried chicken can look and taste like. Fried chicken is a sacred food in America, but the countries of Asia have excelled in producing distinctive ways of cooking the bird that reflect culturally specific ingredients, sensibilities, flavors, and techniques.
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