Hot Thai Chicken! - Fried Chicken in Sweet Chili Lime Sauce Recipe

Sawasdee ka. Welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. I am so excited about what we are going to make today because I have finally developed a recipe worthy of the name Hot Thai Chicken. So Hot Thai Chicken has been an ongoing Freudian slip of mind. So many times I've said it instead of saying Hot Thai Kitchen. So I thought that should be a dish. So here it is, Hot Thai Chicken for you. And if you are ready, let's get started. So Hot Thai Chicken is fried chicken that's tossed in this sweet, spicy, sour, sticky, super yummy sauce. It's going to be so good. So we're going to start out with some chicken thighs. I prefer thighs because when we fry it, there's lots of little nooks and crannies in chicken thigh and those are going to sort of collect the dredge, the flour dredge, and make it extra crispy and yummy. So I've cut it into six to seven pieces per thigh. You don't want anything too small because you don't want it to be just a bite full of crust and a tiny bit of chicken, right? So we're going to add to this an egg. Just going to break that up. And also some cornstarch. And then just a little bit of salt. And what this is, is it's going to be the liquid that's going to coat the chicken and then we're going to dredge the chicken in flour and that liquid is going to pick up the flour and that's going to be the crust. Okay, so now I'm going to let that sit while we make the hot Thai chicken sauce. And as the chicken sits, it'll absorb some of the liquid in the egg and make the chicken a little moist and also allow the cornstarch to fully absorb the liquid. So this is the sauce right here. This is what makes the chicken hot Thai. So I've got here some Thai chili paste. And Thai chili paste you can get at Asian grocery stores and if you can't find it, I have a recipe for making your own. Slightly time consuming, but it's easy. So you can make a big batch once, you can use it in so many recipes. Some oyster sauce. And along with a mini whisk, a mini rubber spatula is always very, very useful. And of course, fish sauce. If it's going to be my signature recipe, it has to have fish sauce in it. I'm going to add some sour, so I've got some vinegar. More sugar because the Thai chili paste is a little sweet, but it's definitely not sweet enough. So this sauce is primarily going to be sort of sweet and sour. You'll see. It's very good. Some water to thin it out because we're going to cook this for a little bit. So I've got some whole cloves of garlic that I am going to grate using a microplane. Now you can also just finely mince the garlic if you want or pound it in a mortar and pestle. Okay. And now the hot part. I've got here some ground dried chilies, which I took out the seeds because I don't want it to be too spicy. And then I ground it up in a coffee grinder or a spice grinder. If you want it extra spicy, leave the seeds in or you can also add extra sort of smaller, spicier chilies into it as well. If you want it not spicy at all, you can also use a little bit of paprika. Then you still get the color and the chili flavor, you know, without the heat in case you're making it for kids or something. Okay. So that's going in. All right. So the sauce is not done yet. There's a few more ingredients, but at this point I want to cook it down and reduce it until it's very thick and you want to cook that garlic because right now it's raw and marry and mingle the flavors of everything in here. Okay. So the sauce is really thick now and you want this to be thicker than it should be at the end because we're going to add some lime juice to this in a little bit. So just like this is good. We're going to turn it off and finish it. So now we're going to add my secret ingredient, which is some finely, finely chopped kefir lime leaves. I removed the center rib and then finely, finely julienne the leaves. And then I run my knife through it one more time to get them really, really small because you want to make sure that the pieces are small enough that they'll distribute evenly amongst the chicken and then you don't get, you know, really big pieces sort of in your teeth at the end. Okay. So in that goes and the heat of the sauce will help distribute the flavor of kefir lime leaves. Now, if you don't have kefir lime leaves, you can also add lime zest. However, I'm going to add lime zest anyway, in addition to the lime leaves, because I love that lime flavor on my chicken. Zest it quite thinly because lime has a very thin skin and you don't want to go so deep that you get to the white part because that's bitter. I think for me, because I already have the kefir lime leaves in there, just half a lime is okay. Mmm. Smells good. Mmm. All right. And now finally, some lime juice, fresh lime juice in addition to the vinegar so that we get some freshness, fresh flavors in there. And the reason why you want to add the lime juice now and not earlier is you don't want to cook lime juice, otherwise it destroys that nice, fresh flavors that lime juice has. See, it's going to thin out into this consistency and that's why you want to reduce the sauce to be quite thick. So I've got some oil here and you want lots of oil for the chicken to swim in. We are deep frying and heat it up to 375, so it's still got a little bit to go. So we're going to prepare our dredge. So I've got some all-purpose flour here and I'm going to add a little bit of cornstarch to it because cornstarch doesn't have any gluten and it helps with the crispiness of the coating. Throw all of our chicken right into this dredge all at once, okay? And all that extra liquid will help create the crackly, crispy bits. So you want all of that. So now I'm going to toss that in the flour. And you want to really make sure that all the chicken is spread out, not sticking together. Here's a little option, a little trick for you. If you want a thicker coating around the chicken, what you can do is sprinkle a little bit of water on it. And that water will sort of gum up the flour around the chicken and that's how you get a thicker coating. And actually, that's what I'm going to do. In it goes. And you want hot oil for this because the pieces of the chicken are not very big. You want the outside to crisp before the inside overcooks, right? If the heat is low, it'll take a long time for the outside to crisp up. By that time, the inside is overcooked. Okay, so you want to put an apron on because it's going to spatter a little bit. So once it's nice and golden brown, it's been about two and a half to three minutes, then you can take them out. Okay? Alright, this is the moment. Guys, this is the moment. Pour your sauce in here. Ooh. I'm going to toss my chicken. You know what's going to happen and you know it's going to be good. So pour it all in. And then just really quickly, give them a toss. And you want to make sure every surface is coated as much as is possible. That smells so good. I can really smell that lime. At first, it might not look like there's enough sauce, but trust me, there is. But what you want to do is, once or twice, scrape, because there's going to be a lot of sauce stuck to your utensils, and also along the sides of the bowl. See how much I can gather? And then just do this just once or twice as you toss, and it'll stretch the sauce a little bit more. But there is a danger of having too much sauce, in which case it's really quite overpowering because the sauce is quite strong. And then you can't really have it on its own, and then you've got to have it with rice and all that stuff. Oh my god, that looks so good. You don't need any garnish. I'm going to go in right now. Mm-mm-mm. Which one is it? Oh, this one looks great. There are no words. Just no words. Mm-mm-mm. Totally worthy of being called hot Thai chicken. It's actually a flavor that's a bit hard to describe because there's a lot going on. It's sweet, but not overly sweet, sour from the lime juice, salty and a little bit spicy, and that lime flavor, the citrus flavor from the kaffir lime leaves and the lime zest just really brightens it up. A little bit of crunch from that coating, but also sticky and tender. Oh my god. You have to try this recipe. Promise me you will try this recipe. And don't forget to let me know what you think. The recipe will be on hotthaikitchen.com, and when you make it, send me a photo on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. And subscribe to the show if you haven't done so right here, so you will never miss an awesome recipe like this. And I will see you next time for your next delicious Thai meal. Because that's the perfect consistency to sort of coat the chicken. Sorry, I didn't get that.