How to Make Jet Tila's Thai Cashew Chicken | Ready Jet Cook | Food Network

Yo, that was not a TV bite. This is so good. Let me take another bite. Hey friends, Jet Tila here with another episode of Ready Jet Cook, where we break down the core techniques of Asian cooking from shop to plate, one dish at a time. Today, we're making Thai style cashew chicken, a sweet and savory melting pot of Thai, Chinese, and American cuisine that also happens to be the perfect culinary mashup of the three cultures I grew up in. But before we get into the recipe, I need you to hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any of the dishes we're cooking this season. Okay team, it's Thai cashew chicken time. We're making a Thai version of a Chinese-American classic cashew chicken. I bet you can't guess what my first ingredient is. Cashews. Pretty nuts, right? If you didn't know, cashews proliferate all over southern Thailand. It's a nut that we grow and we consume quite often in Thailand. You want to make sure that you're buying roasted cashews versus raw. Cashews, if you didn't know, have a nice kind of a buttery texture. They're not a really like a firm, crunchy nut. If you can't find toasted cashews, I like to throw them in an air fryer for about six to eight minutes and then they're perfect. And that bag of old cashews in your pantry, get rid of it. If you want to make them last longer, just store them in the fridge in an airtight container. If you can't find cashews or you don't like cashews, no big deal. I like peanuts a lot as an alternative for this dish. All right, I got a couple more things to grab. I can't leave without grabbing another essential Thai ingredient, nam prik pao. Well, let me explain it a little better. Nam prik pao literally translates to roasted chili paste, also known as chili paste in soybean oil. It's totally unique in the chili paste world. The flavors come from roasted garlic and shallots and dried shrimp and fish sauce. It is the unsung hero of the Thai pantry. The word chili paste can be kind of a misnomer because this is more of an amazing seasoning paste. It's actually more savory and sweet than it is spicy. It's very similar to like onion jam. Have you ever had a really great onion jam on a burger? Imagine that plus a little more heat and a lot more umami. It also gives tremendous color because it has a little bit of a red hue. So to a cashew chicken dish, it's going to give you almost like the color notes of curry paste and the oil gives you a beautiful red color. So this is really the secret that takes Thai cashew chicken over the top. I'll show you when we get into the kitchen. I'm sure you've tried cashew chicken in a Chinese restaurant and it's because this dish originated in Chinese American restaurants, but the dish was so popular that Thai restaurants felt they were missing out and had to get into the game. So they created their own original version and this is it. And I may know a thing or two about Thai restaurants because I actually grew up in some of the first Thai restaurants in America, but I'll get into that in a second. Let's start by breaking this dish down. The first thing I do with the chicken breast is find the graining and the graining is kind of going the way my fingers are. So let's cut into three to four inch pieces with the grain. All right. And I think I can get like two to three blocks out of here. Once you cut with the grain, you take each block and now cut against the grain, but I'm not going to cut perpendicular straight up and down. I'm going to angle that knife slightly. So when I make my slice, I pull a tile off that piece of chicken. Now just keep repeating that tile. So you're not only cutting against the grain to keep the chicken moist, you're also creating a nice flat surface, which is going to cook up really quickly and evenly. This shape of protein in the pan will also pick up a lot of those delicious seasonings we're going to use. So there you go. And some of you diehard ready jet cook viewers are going to wonder why I'm not velveting. Now we're getting out of that Chinese cooking world and we're going into the Thai world where we don't really super tenderize this chicken. We actually like the chicken to have a little more texture. It's the difference between Thai stir fry and Chinese stir fry. Chicken is sliced into perfect tiles. So as usual, I'm using a gel board or a plastic board to contain my raw proteins so I don't cross contaminate. Now that I'm done with the chicken, I could put this away, wash my hands and we'll move on and stay clean. So in terms of veg prep, why don't we turn this into a mini knife skills class. The way I like to hold a knife is above the handle. I'm going to put my thumb and index finger on the blade and then I'm going to wrap my three fingers around the handle. And this is what we call in the kitchen a pinch grip. And now the knife is an extension of my arm. Get tons of leverage on it. Okay. Onions, bell peppers, pretty simple. This is how I like to cut a bell pepper. Remember the Tila tile slice dice. Let's make everything a tile first. So tile from the back of the pepper, the tile from the front of the pepper, get rid of the stem. And now we're going to tile out the rest of the pepper by just inserting our knife into a tile, turning flat and rolling the seed pod cut away from the pepper. See, look at that perfect seed pod and no seeds in the actual red pepper. It's good practice to repeat your motions. So instead of like cutting this bell pepper all the way through, since I have a green pepper, I'm going to do tiles first. It's the way we do it in a pro kitchen. Let's get rid of that stem button because we've tiled it perfectly. And I'm going to do the same here. Insert the knife, flatten it out. And that way I can see the seed pod rib lines and we've got perfect tiles. I'm only going to need half of each pepper. So this way I can be neat and tidy about it and save this for my next dish. I like these little French fry cuts called batonettes. But if you love dices, that's fine. The only thing I ask is you keep the sizes relatively the same so they cook up nice and evenly. But these are batonettes. They are French fry cuts. They're about a quarter inch wide and about two to three inches long. So the difference between red and green bell pepper is really just the flavor. Reds are fruity and sweet. Greens have that kind of like chlorophyll grassy note. So I like it, but Ali hates green pepper. So I'm cooking it for her. It's all red pepper or yellow peppers or orange peppers. So for the onions, I'm going to stay away from batonette. I'm actually going to do a large dice just so I can have some variance in the dish. I take the tip and the root side completely off. I like to split in half. I'm only going to need half the onion. And I like to peel the onion while it's sliced in half because I think it's easier and more efficient. And I'm going to do dices here. So a large dice is three quarter inch. So I'm going to go thirds first and then thirds this way, break it apart. And I could have done batonettes, but I like that variety between the batonette pepper and the large dice onion. OK, last few things, garlic and chilies. I'm going to do the grandma garlic smash. So keep the garlic closer to your body. Allow the handle to be off the board so you get a flat smash. That doesn't work as your knuckles get in the way. And then not a pressure smash. Don't hit your camera person. All right. At home position smash. And then I'm going to do a few passing cuts. Perfect. I think chili and garlic and Thai cooking have to be together. We have these things called mortar and pestles, and most grandmas will just smash the chili and garlic together in the mortar and they just leave a pile of that chili garlic and they start all their stir fries that way. Two is reasonable. Three, four is pretty spicy. I'm going to leave that up to you. I want to feel the heat. I don't want to get hurt by the heat, so I'm going to leave it there. I'm also using dried chilies for this recipe. It really is an homage to the Chinese side of this dish. And speaking of that connection between Thai and Chinese cuisine, believe it or not, most of us Thai people do have Chinese roots. For instance, our family's last name Tila was actually say TSE. So we're not only Chinese by blood. Most Thai restaurant families are actually Chinese. So there's a very deep, long connection between Chinese cuisine and Thai cuisine. If you love Thai food, check out my recipe for Pad Thai. It's another Thai American classic. All right, so my veggies are prepped. My chicken is sliced. Let's get into this Thai stir fry. So for this dish, I'm using a skillet, a big skillet. The larger, the better. You want as much surface area as possible so all the ingredients could cook evenly and quickly. I'm always starting with a neutral oil. I think there's a lot of debate in the world. Canola, peanut, vegetable, whatever you like to cook with as long as it gets a really high smoke point. It's really important to preheat your pan on a common stove if you're not cooking in a commercial kitchen because you want this thing to get searing really quickly. So we're going right with chicken breasts and use that surface area of the pan because you want coast to coast searing. I'm looking at the veggies and the onions look a little denser and square, so they're going to take a little longer. Garlic, chili, and get that moving. It is critical to make sure all of your prep or your mise en place is ready because once that pan is at like 400 degrees, you can't stop and start or you're going to lose the sear. Time for dried chilies and of course cashews. All right, bell peppers are going in late here because they are cut a little thinner. The whole idea is by the time the stir-fry is done, every ingredient from the thickest to the smallest is timed out and cooks evenly. All right, we've got the sear. Let's get some sauces in there to start building that gravy. So unlike a Chinese stir-fry, I haven't velveted. The chicken is really nice and brown. It looks more firm and that's exactly what I want. Thai oyster sauce. If you've cooked with me before, we've used Chinese oyster sauce and it's bigger in salt. Thai oyster sauce is actually more mellow and sweet. And then since we're doing Thai food, I'm also using fish sauce. Another magical ingredient you may not have used, chili paste and soybean oil. Finally, I love adding a little pinch of MSG. MSG is the secret that's going to make your home dishes taste like the restaurant. So visually what I'm looking for is that sauce that's sticking down to a glaze. Chicken is good. Veggies are good. I'm ready to plate. Since it's Thai food, I'm always going to pair this with the king of grains, jasmine rice. The crunchiness, the spiciness, the deep flavor of this dish is going to complement really well and always match your utensils to your cuisine. Chinese food, I might use chopsticks. But in Thai culture, if I'm eating jasmine rice, I'm always using a spoon. Before I take a bite, I'm going to top this with just a little bit of that white pepper. You're going to find that white pepper is a very common topping condiment for a lot of Thai dishes. And it adds that little floral note right at the end. I'm trying to compose the perfect bite. Peppers, onions, cashews, chicken on that jasmine rice. Yo, that was not a TV bite. This is so good. Let me take another bite. That flavor profile of hot, sour, salty, sweet, the bell peppers and the umami flavors really bring me back to being a young cook in our Thai restaurants. This is the dish that I would watch the cooks make and want to get a little bite of. So before the orders went out, I got a little courtesy bite of a lot of these plates. And this takes me right back to that fun memory. I really hope you cook this Thai specialty at home. And if you do, please let me know how it turned out in the comments. And if you're hungry for more, don't forget to subscribe to catch every episode of Ready Jet Cook. We'll see you later.