Kung Pao Chicken!

Thought I'd give a couple new recipes a try this week. The first one a modification on Graham Elliot's Kung Pao Turkey Drumsticks featured in Food & Wine magazine. He's the culinary director for Lollapalooza where they serve this dish and you might have seen him as a judge on Masterchef recently.

This simple recipe produced some seriously tasty Kung Pao, and will put to shame much of what you've probably eaten from Chinese restaurants. I was blown away by how great it was!

I decided to use chicken instead of turkey, and breast instead of drumsticks. I grilled the chicken instead of pan fried. I used the breast whole, but after completing the recipe, i think I should have chopped the chicken into little pieces and tossed them with the sauce. That's what it's all about. Take a recipe, try it out, play with it, and make modifications as you learn!

Ingredients:
A honey glaze (optional, I don't think it added much to it, the sauce is so good you don't need this.)
1/3 cup honey
1 tbs. minced fresh ginger

Kung Pao Sauce
3 tbs. minced fresh ginger (an inch on ginger root is roughly a tbs. Peel the ginger then finely mince)
1 medium shallot, minced
3 garlic gloves, minced
2 tbs. mirin (I didn't have this, so I used 2 tbs. of cooking sherry and a tsp. of sugar as a substitute)
3 tbs. rice vinegar
6 tbs. soy sauce (we used low sodium)
2 tbs. hoisin sauce
1 tbs. sambal oelek or another Asian hot sauce

Meat
3-4 chicken breast, or any chicken or turkey pieces.

Coating
1/4 cup salted roasted peanuts, chopped
2 scallions, minced

However you want to cook your meat, you can get that started while you're working on the sauce. I just grilled my chicken with a little salt, for roughly 25 minutes.

If you want to make the honey glaze:
In a small saucepan, bring the honey and 1 tbs. of ginger to a simmer. Let cool and then strain into a bowl. Basically you're making some ginger infused honey to drizzle over your chicken or turkey.

Kung Pao sauce:
While mincing all your minced items, heat 2 tbs. canola oil over low heat. Add the shallot and cooking over low heat, stirring until softened, about 4 minutes. Add in the garlic and 3 tbs. fresh ginger, cooking over low heat for 2 minutes. Stir in the mirin (or substitute) and vinegar and simmer until slightly reduced, around 2 minutes. Add in the soy sauce and hoisin, simmering until slightly thickened, around 1 minute.

You should end up with something like this:

Then stir in the hot sauce. I didn't have any sambal oelek, but I had some of this stuff.. so I used a little. You could leave it out, use a little chili flakes, or get some Asian hot sauce, whatever your taste.

You can leave your sauce on simmer or low while your chicken is finishing up.

The original recipe called for pan frying turkey drum sticks, but I decided to grill some chicken breast instead.

When your meat is done, toss it with the sauce and get it nice and coated. The idea is then to roll it in the chopped peanut and scallion mixture in a bowl or pie tin. Without skin, my sauce didn't stick that well to the chicken, so I ended up pouring it on top and then applying the peanut and scallion mixture.

 
If you're going to chop up the chicken like I will do the next time I make this, just toss your chicken with the peanut and scallion mixture. If you make the ginger honey, drizzle it on top too.

The sauce is outstanding, and goes really well on rice too, so it's a great pairing to make together.

Try this sauce, it will blow your mind and is well worth the little effort to make it. You won't believe it. Spice up that everyday chicken!