Sesame Chicken - Our Perfected, Restaurant Recipe!

All you people who order sesame chicken out there, next time you bite into the chicken, the chicken inside looks dry and it looks like there's less chicken than batter. It's actually been in the freezer for a while. Believe me, you'll taste the difference here at home. Hi everybody, it's Bill from the Woks of Life and today we're going to make sesame chicken, everybody's favorite thing to order on a takeout menu. Now dare I say that sesame chicken has become even more popular than another iconic dish, General Tso's chicken. Now my theory on that is that General Tso's chicken has broccoli in it, it also has a little bit of spicy and tangy kick to it, whereas sesame chicken doesn't have broccoli. Case in point, my niece's husband who loves chicken and broccoli, this is how he orders chicken and broccoli. I'll have a chicken and broccoli, no broccoli. No broccoli, he just likes the chicken in the sauce and your sesame chicken, the same deal. That's why everybody loves it. That's your theory. That's my theory anyways. That's one of the reasons why everybody loves it. So let's get right to it. Open up the chicken and start marinating it. We're going to use dark meat. Now can you use white meat? Absolutely can use white meat, but all the restaurants and we today are going to use dark meat. So we've got a pound of chicken thighs here. We're going to trim off a little bit of this fat. You want to cut into bite-sized pieces, but they all got to be just about the same size. And the reason for that is you want them to cook evenly. Okay, so we've got our chicken cut. To give this chicken some flavor, we have to marinate it. We're going to put some garlic powder, an eighth of a teaspoon. Now somebody in the comments for one of our other recipes said like an eighth of a teaspoon, give me a break, put a quarter in. Well, you know, an eighth of a teaspoon is actually quite a bit. I said it was of a big pinch, but if you look at the eighth of a teaspoon, it's like maybe like three good pinches. This garlic and onion powder is pretty strong. We don't want to overpower it, but we do want the chicken to have some flavor, a half teaspoon of salt. And then we're going to put about a quarter teaspoon white pepper. This is going to have some sweetness in it and that'll balance it. Now, along with that, a teaspoon Shaoxing wine. And because it's sesame chicken, we've got a half teaspoon sesame oil. We're going to really make it restaurant tasty and put in a quarter teaspoon of MSG. Last, but definitely not least, a little bit of water. This is the mark of a good sesame chicken. It's going to be juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside. So what are your thoughts on putting an egg in the chicken marinade? Egg adds a lot of body to it, adds more coating, but I think in the end it does affect the flavor a little bit and it also makes the crust a little bit more spongy. And there are a lot of people who like that, that little spongy crust after it gets drenched in sauce. But today we're not using an egg. We chose not to do that and go on the crispy side. But if you want to try it, you can experiment at home. Now you mix everything up and make sure all those flavors, that Shaoxing wine, the garlic powder, get a chance to penetrate the chicken. And you can see there's no water to be found in this chicken. That's it. We'll set that aside. We're going to make the sauce. We're going to start with hot chicken stock because we're going to add three tablespoons of sugar. One, two, and three. We're going to add one tablespoon of soy sauce. Next, oyster sauce, and it's one and a half tablespoons. Next, we've got a tablespoon of honey. And now we've got a tablespoon of clear rice wine or Shaoxing wine. So I have the Shaoxing wine out. I'm going to use that. Next, we're going to add one and a half teaspoons of rice vinegar. All right. And some ground pepper. This is an eighth of a teaspoon. I'm just going to eyeball it. And we have one and a half teaspoons of sesame oil. So we've got sesame oil in the chicken marinade. We've got sesame oil in the sauce. And we've got sesame seeds to top off the dish. Make sure you stir this up really well. And this is one of the reasons why we use the hot water so that all that sugar and honey dissolves. And now we're going to set the sauce aside and make our batter. First, six tablespoons of cornstarch. In other words, a quarter cup plus two tablespoons. That's one, two, three tablespoons of flour, a half teaspoon of baking soda, tablespoon of oil, and six tablespoons of water. That's one, two, three, four, five, and six. Now I have a little spatula here. Let's fold everything together. Now you could have also whisked this together and added your chicken, but I'm a little lazy and I decided just to put it right onto the chicken. Last but not least, we're going to have a clove of garlic, chopped. And I've also got our toasted sesame seeds here for finishing our sesame chicken. So we're at the wok now. We need about four cups of oil. Our oil temperature is right at about 335. We're ready to fry. We're going to stir up this batter. You can see it's thickened up a little bit. You're going to have to control the oil temperature because the chicken is going to cool off. We're going to try to fry this in two batches. It's very important to be calm around your oil. Don't fear the oil, but respect it. Don't want to make any sudden moves and cause splashing. That's right. And you can see now our temperature is steadily rising and when it hits 335, that's where we want it to be. It's been about five to six minutes here and we're going to take the chicken out. It's nice and crispy, but it has to rest. We're ready for our second batch. Second batch is done. So now we're going to let the chicken rest. The juices get redistributed back in the chicken, just like resting a steak. Now the outside coating has actually been steamed a little bit by the juices of the chicken. So the goal of the second fry is to fry that up without overheating the inside so that you get a crispy outside and a juicy inside. All right. We're ready for our second fry now. So I'm turning up the heat and it's doing pretty good. It's already pretty high. The second fry is going to fry about two to three minutes. All right. The chicken is looking golden brown and crispy. It's all done. So we're going to take it out now. Put that in there. Really nice. Okay. Okay. I spot a little piece of chicken here. Yum. Now pour out the oil through a fine mesh strainer. Here's a tip for the oil. After you finish frying and the oil is still hot, cover it. Otherwise it'll stink up the house. All right. So I'm going to make the cornstarch slurry. I forgot to make it ahead of time. Two teaspoons cornstarch and one tablespoon of water. Okay. That's our cornstarch slurry. So we've got a tablespoon of oil here. I'm going to add the garlic. I'm not going to waste any time to add the sauce. And remember this sauce you want to make sure you don't have anything on the bottom. So we're going to stir it up again. Because we have high heat, I'm just utilizing the heat on the sides of the wok. Kind of deglazing the wok here. Now we're going to pour in the cornstarch. And you do want to add this in gradually, but this looks pretty good. We're going to reduce the sauce a little bit. That is perfect. So now we're ready to add our chicken. Dump the whole thing in. We're going to start mixing. This is where a nice toss of the wok is helpful. Now we're ready to plate it up. This nice sesame seed. Sesame's in here. Top this with sesame seed. And that is our sesame chicken. Let's give it a taste. Okay. We're going to try this sesame chicken. Get a nice healthy piece here. The sauce is perfect. Nice and juicy on the inside. Crispy on the outside. Now that just tastes like I got it from a good Chinese restaurant. Maybe even better. And be sure to check out our cookbook, The Woks of Life. Recipes to know and love from a Chinese American family. Because this recipe is in the book. If you enjoyed this video and you love sesame chicken, give us a like and subscribe on YouTube and visit us at thewoksoflife.com for more recipes. Thanks folks. It happens. The chopstick kind of scrapes the batter out. It's not, it's not that actually. A lot of people don't have the chopstick skills to do that. Including myself. That's true. Including myself.