Nice! Comes to my favorite Sichuan dish again! Sichuan peppercorn chicken is a featured real Sichuan dish, which is mainly flavored with Sichuan peppercorn.
This special Chicken dish is named as Sichuan Peppercorn Chicken(花椒鸡), is quite popular only in western part of China. And you may find it in real Sichuan restaurants.
My mother grew a Sichuan peppercorn tree in the back golden and I treat it as a treasure. When the peppercorn is going to be mature, I just have the feeling that see the aroma from 1 meter away.
Possibly I need to introduce Sichuan Peppercorn a little bit more. Sichuan peppercorn(花椒huajiao In Chinese) sometimes also short as Sichuan pepper or Szechuan pepper, is one of the traditional Chinese medicines. It can help to create a numb feeling of your tongue. If you ever tried the Mala taste of Sichuan cuisine, then it is Sichuan peppercorn that brings the ma taste.
The cooking method of Sichuan peppercorn chicken is similar to Szechuan Chicken -mala chicken(辣子鸡丁). However more peppercorns are used for the main taste rather than dried chili peppers.
To make this yummy Sichuan peppercorn Chicken at home, firstly Sichuan peppercorn is needed.
You can see from the picture below, I am using the fresh green Sichuan Peppercorns. They has a unique and stronger taste than dried ones. If fresh peppercorn is really hard to find, you can replace them with dried Sichuan peppercorn (soaking them firstly around 10 minutes in warm water).
And for the treatment of the chicken, I marinade it firstly with the marinating sauce and then coat with cornstarch just before frying. This creates a crispy surface and super tender inner.
- 3 tablespoons Sichuan peppercorn , green ones are best
- 4 chicken legs , or 8.oz boneless chicken breast
- 3 tablespoons cooking oil for deep frying
- 1 round red pepper
- 1 scallion chopped
- 2 garlic cloves sliced
- 1 root ginger sliced
- 2 dried chili peppers
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon cooking wine
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Half of egg white
- 2 teaspoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon cooking wine
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
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Cut the chicken thigh or boneless chicken breast into cubes around 2 cm. Marinate the cubes with marinating sauce. Set aside.
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In a small bowl, mix all the ingredients for stir-fry sauce. Set aside.
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Heat up oil in wok. Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with the chicken cubes just before deep-frying. Deep-fry the chicken cubes until the shape is firmed. Transfer the chicken cubes out and leave around 1/2 tablespoon cooking oil in wok.
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Add dried pepper and Sichuan peppercorn in to stir-fry until aroma. And then add garlic, ginger and scallion too. Stir-fry until you can smell the taste.
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Return fried chicken cubes back. Add stir-fry sauce and peppers. Mix well and serve hot!
If you are using dried Sichuan peppercorn, soak them with warm water around 20 minutes before cooking.
You make the chicken look so attractive on the photos! I love Asian-inspired foods! Those green peppercorns are so fresh – I’ve never seen anything like that before!
Julia,
Thanks for commenting. Those little green peppercorns are only available from Sichuan area even in China. really special and taste really good. I really hope that you will have a chance to taste it.
I did tried this recipe and taste too salty. I have to use vinegar as dipping sauce to remove some saltiness. I will try it again and try it only 1 tsp but I believe that this is a good recipe.
Thanks.
Hi Joey,
Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. I will update the recipe for a better result. Happy cooking ahead.
I just tried this with all the ingredients – apart from the cooking wine and starch part. It tastes mostly great, very simple. However, I added two tablespoons of sichuan pepper but the dish is so overloaded with them to the point where I can’t eat it!
For comparison, I ate in the best Chinese restaurant in our capital city here – where the Chinese ambassador goes to eat – and had sichuan pepper beef. It was more a case of there being a few sichuan peppers and a lot of chilli, rather than every mouthful containing several peppercorns -this is way too much as it’s a really dominant flavour. Thanks for the other great tips though, all the best.
Hi Meeps,
The dish with a lot of chili pepper but just a little sichuan peppercorn is called Chongqing Chicken, a different dish from this one. You can check it here https://chinasichuanfood.com/mala-chicken/. This one is featured by the large amount of Sichuan peppercorn used in this recipe. I hope you can try the Chongqing chicken version next time.
Do you eat the Sichuan peppercorns or are they mainly used to flavor the sauce?
They are only for flavoring. There are lots of Sichuan dishes using large amount of pepper and Sichuan peppercorn. All the seasonings are just for adding flavors.
Thanks for sharing! My bf and I made this tonight and it was amazing!! We used the dried red peppercorns with soaking
Nice all chinese food
HI Elaine, why we need to soak the dried Sichuan peppercorn in warm water for 10 minutes to replace the fresh one in your recipe, thanks!
cheers
Lisa Liu
Soaking dried Sichuan peppercorn can create a similar flavor of fresh peppercorn.