Hunan Chicken Recipe (Not your average brown sauce!)

Alright, Hunan chicken people. So what is Hunan chicken? Well I did a Hunan beef before and made a little bit more authentic I think than what's the Hunan beef and the Hunan chickens out there on the internet. And I feel like everything, a lot of those dishes are just some chicken and peppers and some vegetables cooked in a brown sauce. So what is it really, what really makes it Hunan chicken? Isn't this an Americanized Chinese dish? Is it? It is. It kind of is. Hunan chicken. Which one are you trying to represent? Hunan chicken, the majority of Hunan chicken recipes on the internet are Americanized. And they're just chicken cooked in brown sauce with a little bit of ginger, a little bit of a spice and what have you. But I feel like a more authentic Hunan chicken needs to have fermented black beans, needs to have lots of fresh ginger and garlic, and it needs to have chili oil. Leeks are very, leeks and peppers are a very important vegetable in Hunan cooking. They're virtually in a lot of different dishes that you cook, that you have. We go to a local Hunan restaurant where we live and when we walk into the restaurant it's like you just walked through the portal of China. And there's pictures on the menus and they cook Hunan dishes and lots of these flavors are in their Hunan dishes. So let's make this Hunan chicken. Woohoo! Okay. Alright, Sarah. So this chicken is marinated and velveted for as little as 15 minutes. You can do it if you're in a pinch for time or you can do it overnight. Okay, our wok is screaming hot. You can't get it hot enough because you get a nice nonstick surface. So here you go. I'm going to slide this chicken in like that. I'm going to spread it out a little bit and you can see it's already dancing. It's not sticking. I'm going to sear one side. We want to get a nice crust. And notice we're using dark meat chicken because it's more flavorful. And in China, that's exactly what you would be using, dark meat chicken. Can you use white meat? Sure. Dark meat's going to have more flavor. My wok here is super hot. So 30 seconds time. At home, you might have to sear it a little bit longer on each side. Alright, I'm going to turn that over. Look at that beautiful sear on that. Lovely. Now I'm going to toss it, move it up like I usually do. Move the chicken up here so that the oil stays in there. And take it. And yes, I'm going to put it in the old bowl because I don't really want to wash another bowl. And this chicken is going to go back in to your dish and be cooked again. So you don't have any worries. So now we've got this beautiful flavored oil here. And I'm going to turn the flame back on a low heat. And I'm going to put in this. This oil has now been infused with chicken. Now I'm going to infuse it with this. I'm going to put these peppers in there and toast these dried peppers. Now these dried peppers, I've soaked in some water so they don't burn so easy. Because I really want to get the flavor out of it. But I really don't want to break these open. Because if you do break these open, the seeds are going to come out. And then they may be too hot, too spicy. But if you really like them spicy, break them open. I'm going to put these fermented black beans in there. Give everything a toast. Now this is super, super fragrant right now. Oh yeah. And then now I'm going to put the garlic in. And I'm going to turn this now to high heat. And I'm just going to add these peppers and leeks all together. So once you add this, once you toast your chili oil and your fermented black beans, you do want to add this pretty quickly so it doesn't burn. This helps cool the wok off a little bit. And you want to toast your ginger. Once you toast your ginger, everything, all of these, you want to add all of it together. You just want to make sure when you're cooking this, you don't want to burn the aromatics. So watch your temperature. Now I'm going to add this chicken back in. And all the juices. And this chicken is super aromatic. It smells like fried chicken. Alright, I'm going to turn it up. I got my sauce here now. Stir it all up. And I'm going to pour it right in. Make sure I got all the ingredients in there. And it's super hot wok right now. Gather everything in here. Now normally you would say, hey, do I want to thicken this with a little cornstarch? You could if you want to. Now in China, when they cook, they actually rarely use cornstarch for a dish like this. They don't really thicken it so much. But what I've done here is the wok hay trick. You gather everything in here. Now I have it on super high heat. High heat is the highest heat right now. And it's super heating the sides of the wok. So now, watch what I'm going to do. I'm going to stir the sides of the wok. You see that searing that happens? That's wok hay. You're seeing it right here. All that nice smoke. Look at how beautiful that looks now. Everything is coated. And you see, all the sauce is just about gone. Everything is just coating the chicken. This is ready to plate now. Wow. That's incredible. Now that is Hunan chicken. This is the authentic taste of Hunan chicken. You've got to make it at home. Let's go check it out. Whoa. Nice chicken. Mom, that's why we pay big bucks. Thumbs up.