Lemon Chicken, the Original Cantonese style (西柠鸡)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.พ. 2019
- Lemon chicken is probably best known as a takeout staple in the West. Because of that, there's a chorus of people that insist that this dish is not 'authentic' Chinese food. While it's certainly not a common dish - especially nowadays - this is originally a Hong Kong dish, and can be found at chachaanteng in Guangdong.
There's a couple ways to go about this - we opted for a deep fried chicken cutlet using an egg cornstarch batter... but you'll also see this made with whole deboned chicken, or perhaps fried in pieces, and sometimes with water/cornstarch batter. The important bit is that sauce, which has a clear lemon-y zing that's balanced with custard powder.
A big thank you to the TH-camr “香港飯ほんこんめし” for the footage of Lemon Chicken in Hong Kong. The channel's in Japanese, but there's a lot of videos of food in Hong Kong. Check out the whole video here:
• 香港飯Vol. 297 西檸軟鶏 って何？ ...
Full, detailed recipe is over here on /r/cooking:
/ recipe_lemon_chicken_t...
And check out our Patreon if you'd like to support the project!
/ chinesecookingdemystified
Outro Music: "Add And" by Broke For Free
/ broke-for-free
ABOUT US
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Learn how to cook real deal, authentic Chinese food! We post recipes every Tuesday (unless we happen to be travelling) :)
We're Steph and Chris - a food-obsessed couple that lives in Shenzhen, China. Steph is from Guangzhou and loves cooking food from throughout China - you'll usually be watching her behind the wok. Chris is a long-term expat from America that's been living in China and loving it for the last nine years - you'll be listening to his explanations and recipe details, and doing some cooking at times as well.
This channel is all about learning how to cook the same taste that you'd get in China. Our goal for each video is to give you a recipe that would at least get you close to what's made by some of our favorite restaurants here. Because of that, our recipes are no-holds-barred Chinese when it comes to style and ingredients - but feel free to ask for tips about adaptations and sourcing too! - แนวปฏิบัติและการใช้ชีวิต
When I think of lemon chicken, I think of my Grandmother. Whenenver my family went out to eat Chinese food with her, she would always order lemon chicken. I don't think I've ever had it myself. I miss her.
This thing would have been a great Valentines day dish.
Or a break up one. 3:50 LOL
@@commentcopbadge6665 LMAO
Did you try it this year?
EDIT: Our custard powder is different than the custard powder sold in the West. That stuff's actually 'instant custard powder' and contains milk powder. If you can't find instant custard easily, just swap for milk powder.
Hey guys, a few notes:
1. Origins here are really quite interesting in that... we couldn't find any specific details on where/when the dish started. In the video I said that it was a Hong Kong dish mostly because (A) you see it more in Hong Kong and (B) there feels like there's an obvious Western influence with the lemons and the custard powder. But Steph used to eat it as a kid in chalou in Guangzhou, so who knows? It's possible that it goes back even further.
2. If anyone wants a nice chuckle, check out that Huffington Post article from the video. While I certainly appreciate the message that "Chinese food is SO much more than the takeout menu"... I think a lot of people take that sentiment a step too far, without really knowing too much about the cuisine. Like, here's what the writer said "wasn't Chinese": Egg Foo Young (Cantonese dish), Sweet and sour anything (lol what), Egg drop soup (homecooking classic), anything with broccoli (seriously?), anything with onions or bell peppers (uh... those are used here too), anything with tomatoes (guess tomato and eggs doesn't exist), duck sauce (pretty sure that's just a mediocre packaged version of the plum sauce you get with roast duck and goose in Guangdong), and spring rolls (Dim sum dish). Such an absurd article. www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/01/29/traditional-chinese-food_n_4687460.html
3. This brings me to a larger point I suppose. There seems to be a lot of hostility to takeout Chinese out there in food circles. In a lot of ways, I get it. I can imagine if you were Chinese American and grew up in a culture that had a totally twisted perspective of your cuisine, that'd feel irksome at best and terrible at worst. Hell, often even I (Chris) feel perturbed by the misconceptions out there. It's a proud, deep, and unfathomably diverse cuisine... and the takeout menu is incredibly reductive. But the majority of that menu still has it's roots in actual Chinese dishes and techniques, it's just an odd selection adapted to the Western palette.
4. The inverse of this also exists in China, in the form of Hong Kong chachaanteng fare, which's it's own Canto-Western thing. You can find dishes liked baked seafood rice, deep-fried french toast, well-done black pepper steak, and so forth. Would I call it great cuisine? Nah. Is it sometimes exactly what I want? Absolutely. Same goes for takeout stuff. To me, I think the message shouldn't be "what you love it bad" but rather "you know that stuff you love? It gets WAY better".
5. As an aside, it'd be interesting if this dish's origins actually came from chachaanteng... which would make it a 'western' dish in China but a 'Chinese' dish in the West.
6. Quick note on the deep-frying - if you notice when we did the video there was still a small touch of white powdered cornstarch after frying. We had to move quick when filming, and didn't quite dust off enough of the excess. Oh well. Didn't impact the final taste, but I'm sure keen eyes might've seen it.
7. If you want to use duck breast, trim off the skin and any excess fat (save it for rendering duck fat) as it'll impart a bit too much duckiness for this sort of dish. In the marinade, either double the white pepper powder, or alternatively squeeze in some ginger juice.
8. Eventually we'll learn how to debone a whole chicken, but we're not quite there yet. There's a classic Cantonese dish from Shunde that de-bones a whole chicken, stuffs it with sticky rice, deep fries it, then roasts it. It's insanely good. We're thinking that that'll be the time when we start to tackle that project, not lemon chicken haha.
9. Apologies if my narration was particularly nasally with this one, I'm fighting a cold.
great video. but for the lemon zest, i think maybe you should use it for garnish at the end instead of cooking with the sauce?
While the West has certainly influenced Chinese food, it also happens in the other direction. Take for example Pâté chinois. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A2t%C3%A9_chinois
Thank you for sharing this recipe/video! Lemon chicken might have first appeared in restaurants/chachantang in the early 70s in Hong Kong; however, I only had it in the US. Interestingly enough, there's a steamed version which was somewhat popular in the Chinese restaurants (in Europe). And yes, that whole boneless chicken stuffed with rice is labor intensive but incredibly good.
A really interesting post about the origins and opinions on lemon chicken and Chinese restaurant food. I often find that. People claim that x food is not authentic (same goes for Indian here in the UK) but, if you actually get into the cuisine and learn from people in x country, you find that the dishes actually have a sound base in that cuisine, more so than people think.
I too have heard the same about broccoli, which is interesting. I think I saw it on another channel. Is it one of those ingredients which has been adopted by the Chinese through Western influence (like tomatoes etc.) which people do not think of as "originally" Chinese?
"Western influence" is a curious concept. It suggests that Chinese people (perhaps expats) saw Western food and adopted their recipes to be closer to Western style, perhaps to be able to sell to westerners in western restaurants. I certainly can't deny that that happened; indeed, I'm sure that it has, especially post about 1920 in the USA.
But there is another side to this. Remember that huge amounts of Chinese were "imported" into the western US in the mid 1800s to build the railroads. Many of them settled in the San Francisco area afterward and formed a huge community that initially was almost exclusively Chinese. These people had certainly seen what the westerners ate while they were working on the railroad (some of them probably cooked it), and that could have some influence on their own food. ("Hey, I like this!")
But there is also the simple case of a change in available ingredients. In 1850 you can't get Chinese broccoli in the US, but you can get western broccoli . So ingredient substitutions had to be made, and recipe adjustments made to adjust for different textures and flavors of the available ingredients. This certainly changed the San Francisco recipes. Maybe more than the fact that there were white guys running around nearby eating different foods. I'm not sure this is really "westernization".
I've been trying this on and off for a long time and it never turned out so good as the restaurant. I've just learned a little technique that makes all the difference. Big, big thank you Steph and Chris.
Haven't had Lemon Chicken since I worked at an upscale Chinese restaurant back in the mid 80s. So happy to see this video. Having fond delicious memories. Thank you.
I tried this recipe last night and the marinade for the chicken is fantastic! The cooking wine got rid of the usual chicken smell and the groove on meat is genius! The batter for deep frying is a bit to thick and not the same as yours, so I need to add about 1 tbsp of water. Maybe our egg size is different.. The batter is very good and still crispy for quite some time. My toddler kept "stealing" the chicken before I had chance to add the lemon sauce. He kept saying hmmm hmm yumm. I am not lemon chicken fan but the lemon sauce is good in this recipe. I love it but still a little bit sour for my taste, however I am sure this is perfect for lemon lover. Definitely a very good recipe.
It looked to me like it might be a duck egg, which is the same size as two chicken eggs.
Thank you for making this video showing how easy it can be to make Lemon Chicken (one of my favourite dishes) at home!
Chris, you and your wife are a godsend with this channel!
My new favourite channel. You guys are going to go a long way. Keep up the great work!
I made this recipe with less
lemon instead of half a 🍋. It turned out beautifully authentic. I am so happy to find your channel. Keep it up!
Finally the recipe i've been searching for! Thankyou so much for sharing this! Made it tonight and it was amazing 🥰
This is a great video, thank you for all additional info.
Custard powder is alive and well here in Australia, where it a staple on any camping trip.
In fact it'd be considered UnAustralian to make custard with anything other than custard powder.
Even "Three-Hatted" restaurants are known to use it in their creme Anglaise due to act of parliament, even if it's one teaspoon per batch.
And yes, we all know it's just cornstarch and tumeric. And highly explosive. Which is why we have to eat it morning, noon, and night. To keep the supplies down. Hence the well known Australian parliamentary expression: "Shut up and drink ya custard".
As Bob Hawke used to say "Anyone who makes custard using just eggs, milk and sugar is a bum"
@@zalibecquerel3463 RIP Bob
@@aldrinthomas2175 I'll have one too. Have one yourself.
@@aldrinthomas2175 I've knocked off for a smoko. I'll be back later on. Ay tru blue...
Made this for dinner today. It turned out great and was delicious! I can confirm that Birds Custard powder works just fine.
I could only find Bird's at first, and I got it online, but then I saw Lion's at 99 Ranch :(
I just heard about this! I didnt want to try the take out place and couldnt find any authentic recipes. I can't wait to make it.
Your channel is fantastic, thanks for making these videos, and for all the information you provide surrounding them, in the comments and on reddit!
Awesome. I get lemon chicken from a HK place here in when a few times a week. Your recipe looks very similar. Will definitely give this a try!
Yum. Awesomeness on a plate.
Thanks for doing this. Lemon chicken is one of my favorites.
OMG - custard powder - that’s genius & totally explains that slightly perfumed taste. I learn something new from every video!
Yeah, after putting custard powder in the sauce, it just smells like childhood, lol. Such a signature but "you can't really put your finger on" ingredient in this dish.
Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Using this crusting method and replacing or adjusting the seasonings to fit American fried chicken is mind blowing. You have to do the initial fry at a lower heat though if you're using bone in chicken pieces. Other than that, do excatly what these guys showed.
1:49 I'm only familiar with Bird's Custard Powder -- staple in the UK for baking -- but the ingredients appear similar to your Lion brand (for those who may have difficulty sourcing).
Definitely going to try this! There are so many little differences that I didn't know about as an american. Looks delicious!
This brought back a lot of memories, I used to eat this a lot as a kid. I didn’t like salty and savoury things, so this was a good way to trick me into eating meat.
She's awesome!!! ❤️
My favorite take out meal! Western or not, it's a great dish. I'll be trying this for sure. Thanks for sharing!
Love Your Cooking😎👍
Made this for my girlfriend today. Couldn't find shiaoxing wine in my local Japanese supermarket so used generic rice wine but turned out great! Thanks so much
Don't forget to cornstarch your cornstarch, cornstarch! Cornstarch.
Do I need to cornstarch the cornstarch of my cornstarch?
@@isaaclai3523 Please sir, may I have some more cornstarch?
Yes of course Timmy, one layer of cornstarch is not enough
is this an Adam Ragusea reference
I'm from Hong Kong, a little older than her father...I think cofn starch is more recent- Corn wasn't a big crop in HongKong or China, where as Tapioca Starch has been throughout S.E.Asia for ever...I don't keep corn starch in my kitchen, yet all types of Tapioca products...I can always taste corn starch- another reason I don't like it...so choices.
Awesome video, I was wondering if you could make a video on Yangshuo Beer Fish. There are almost no videos explaining how to make this delicious and simple meal.
Just tried this for the first time tonight with duck breast. Absolutely delicious and very easy to cook. I’ve been subbed for a while but now I live in an apartment that isn’t a tiny studio box, I can’t wait to experiment some more! 😁
I had this at Sai Wu's , a glorious restaurant in Toronto Ontario Canada, back in the early '70's. it was absolutely delicious.
Lovely plants at the end :)
For all you avid viewers in the UK we have birds custard powder that comes in two forms. Instant that is made with water and a more traditional one that is made with milk. A staple of any UK home for English or Cantonese cooking, I used to eat a bowl of custard just because I could 😂. Also note that the milk version can be left in the fridge so you can have cold custard 👍🏻💖💖😋😋
I wonder if Ambrosia would work?
the microplane zester was originally inspired by woodworking tool, the rasp. I'm sure you can find one of those anywhere in China
when we get chinese food lemon chicken is one of my faovrites
I had a sneaking suspicion that lemon chicken had true Chinese origins. Deep fried chicken with sweet fruit sauce seems to have been very popular in places like Hong Kong and Guangdong in the 50's and 60's. You can learn a lot about what was popular in China in a specific year by checking out your local take out. Chinese restaurants in the US tend to settle on their menu and never change it, which makes sense to me. After all, if you move from China, start a restaurant, and you hit on something people like, you're probably not going to change a lot about that, because the American palate is wildly different from any classically Chinese palate. If you hit on something we like, you're going to keep making it that way, even if you feel you know better. Anyway, I noticed a lot of the restaurants that opened up here in the 1960's have fruity fried chicken. Orange chicken, lemon chicken, lychee chicken, strawberry chicken... sometimes Chiam menus from that era have a chicken section that's just fruity fried chicken with Almond chicken and General Tso's thrown in for food measure.
I honestly think it's funny how people in the US get so cocky about "authentic" Chinese food. I absolutely used to feel that way until I started doing some digging. I found out that most Chiam dishes have their roots in China, and it's actually pretty rare for a dish to be entirely invented here. Chowmein, chop suey, and yes, even Tomato Chow Yuk all got their start in China. That's not to say that a Chinese American restaurant is going to have food like you'd get in China, primarily because there's limited ingredient availabity here. It's partially because they're cooking for a western audience, too, but most of the dishes at your take out are taking their cues from real honest to goodness Chinese food.
What a bonkers recipe!
Very interesting you deep fried with a cornflour batter and no wheat flour. Gluten free people you can join in with the deep fried fun!
i happen to love the canadian chinese version too!
Fantastic. I once had a dish called "Lemon Chicken" but it had a velvet texture and was accompanied by small fried chili peppers. Have you ever seen in China?
Lost any communications with your TH-cam videos !! Miss you both and your wonderful recipes. I'm looking for a good Ginger Salad Dressing recipe... do you happen to have one? Michael in Orlando, Florida.
i always wondered why the coating on my local restaurants lemon chicken was so separated from the meat, i guess they didnt know the cornstarch trick
I made this recipe twice now.
1) I used two eggs for the batter because one wasn't enough to get it to the needed viscosity
2) I doubled the sauce to save some for drizzling over rice
3) The chicken brought down the oil temperature by a lot so I found I needed to overshoot on oil temp
4) substitute 1/8 tsp ginger powder for fresh ginger if not available. Turned out ok
Interesting and awesome. I didn't know the custard powder can be used in savory sauces. Nice tip! I thought it can be used in Hong Kong Egg Waffles or Egg puffs as they call it. Do you know any other applications using custard powder in Cantonese or Hong Kong Cooking recipes?
I watch this video before I go to sleep
You're the first place I've found Chinese Lemon Chicken with a batter crust. Fantastic! Here are some suggestions for additional recipes 1) Almond Chicken (done with a batter like for Lemon Chicken, but this ends up with finely crushed almond on top 2) Char Siu Bau buns but using the smooth thinner bread. I don't like the texture of the Fluffy Buns 3) A friend and I used to eat a fabulous ground pork and cabbage stir fry with what we think was a brown or yellow bean sauce. The ground pork was optional as it was the cabbage and brown sauce we loved. The restaurant staff didn't speak English and the place closed down. We've talked about this dish for the past 30 years. We really miss it. 4) Your Hong Kong Beef Curry - at what stage would you add the potatoes? This is the version I'm used to 5) How long will each of the bought sauces/fermented products last. We westerners don't cook Asian food every day. 6) What sauces etc. flavour enhancers do you suggest adding to western dishes? I know more chefs are adding soy sauce. You two are amazing!
YUM
We have a local Chinese restaurant here which serves something similar to this. I think they got the 'lemon chicken' right but they added flipping pineapples. Was disappointed when they didn't just name the damn thing as 'lemon pineapple chicken'. Told them that when I gave a review of their food.
You guys deserve more subscribers, everything you make is on point! One of my fave channels on TH-cam. Question: Can I use Bird's Custard powder in this, or do I have to find the exact brand you used?
Cheers, thanks for the kind words. We didn't test it ourselves so obviously I couldn't say for 100%, but Bird's Custard powder should work great.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Thank you so much for the reply!! Going to try this recipe out asap. (My apologies for the late response, TH-cam never alerted me to your reply. Hope you both have an amazing day!)
Cheers, yeah, check out our edited note though. The custard powder that we use is actually 'instant custard powder' that contains milk powder. We've gotten reports of happy successes from people that used standard custard powder too though, so either way should be ok. But yeah, if you can find instant custard powder (or alternatively sprinkle in a touch of milk powder too), that would get closest to what we made :)
Thank you, amazing videos - I'm happy deep frying and cooking with lots of oil at home but what do you do with the oil post-deepfry, how many times do you reuse it, how do you store it once you've cooked with it, do different ingredients effect whether you can use it again? thank you again, love the channel
Great video thanks for sharing! What can I substitute custard powder with? If it's a must, what other dishes can I use it for? I don't want to buy a jar of custard powder just for this dish. Many thanks!
You can put a knob of butter in the end to achieve a similar result~ EDIT: for custard powder, it's often used in Cantonese desserts, like the runny salty egg yolk bun, baked pudding with sago, and of course, egg tarts. It can also be used in deep frying batter for the color and fragrance.
I love your channel! It really goes into details that they don't give through in culinary school. Now, I might sound like a total American for this, but what do you serve these dishes with? I really want to make this and the steamed chicken with mushrooms, but I wasn't sure what to serve with them. Rice? Noodles? Would you also have stir fried vegetables with the lemon chicken as well? Thanks for the amazing videos!
Forgive the brief reply, I'm procrastinating writing the narration for the next video.
Take the number of people you're feeding - that's roughly the number of dishes you wanna make, plus white rice (and maybe a soup).
There's no strict rules on what goes with what, just try to make sure things're balanced. E.g. if you're cooking for four, make lemon chicken, the steamed chicken, a stir-fried veg and... something else. I'd probably go with a tofu dish or a fish dish. Serve with white rice and perhaps a soup if you're feeling it.
If that sound like a lot of work, cooking a Chinese meal can be a little bit more work than a Western meal. The key's to not go too ambitious for each dish. E.g. lemon chicken and steamed chicken I'd both call 'medium annoyance level', so you definitely want to go easier for the rest. Stir fried veg is simple as can be. For the hypothetical tofu dish, I'd probably do deep-fried tofu b/c we're deep-frying for the lemon chicken anyhow (see: our how to fry tofu 101 vid, the second of the three recipes). Fried chicken and the fried tofu can sit. Time finishing the sauce with the steamed chicken coming out. Be ready to fry the veg *right* after that's done... once that's good sauce the lemon chicken & you're good to go.
I used to eat this once every week minimum when I was in Hong Kong, there was a small shop(in Hung Hom) that served cheaper to students and they had such good lemon chicken. Whoever says it is not authentic can go ..
I made this last night. I used duck breasts and.... wow! Fantastic!
Way better than my local Chinese restaurant.
Yeah, those Chinese Restaurants in the West are conning everyone
🤤
Hi! Can you please tell a subsititute for wine that you add as it's not available here
1:16 i was like yooo u got to fast man
Not sure what ingredient is being said at that point either. Looked it up in the recipe and apparently it's 1 tsp liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine. I'm not sure where to find this at the store.
Just make sure to get untreated lemons if you zest them ;), otherwise looks great as always!
To this day my wife (from Sichuan) swears this dish is a western thing. Ive never seen it here in Chengdu. Even in Cantonese restaurants. Guess I can make it at home now haha.
Yeah it's not a very common thing. I've only ever seen it myself in Hong Kong, though Steph says in some old chalou they have it - she used to eat it as a kid (her family would order it for the children).
Could I use this recipe for honey chicken? What substitutes will I need to make
*drool drool*
This is dinner tomorrow night! 💖
Jenn 💖
PS: I've not mentioned the spices you sent. And for that I'm sorry. (Eye surgery and all, it's been a hectic two months.)
We've had several dishes using all three. And they are spectacular!
I particularly LOVE the bbq spice. Five spice goes in so many sweet and savory dishes and the sand ginger is an entire experience in itself.
Again. Thank you Steph and Chris.
Cheers, glad you liked them! That spice shop does a real nice job, but especially with their mixes - I much prefer their barbecue spices to a lot of stuff you see outside. In summer, fire up the grill, toss that on a skewer with some salt and maybe a little chili powder... awesome.
Hope everything is well :)
@@ChineseCookingDemystified
Can't complain. No one listens to an old broad complaining anyway, 😂.
Jenn 💖
I'm from Detroit. Can you do an Almond Boneless Chicken or Wor Sue Gai?
That looks good. I wish Chinese fast food make that here in the states.
They do. I havent seen it in many places.
M Gray lots of orange chicken but haven't seen lemon chicken. I guess if you ask they'll make it. There's always a secret menu. I've ordered from the secret menu before.
@@professorm4171 how do you find their secret menu?
aziz alali it's a secret.... Lol. There's no physical menu. Just ask.
@@professorm4171 I am always too nervous to ask. The time that I did, the lady thought i was insane or confused. They actually had a physical one, too. What do you usually order or ask for?
2:00 Look at the size of that egg! So where do I source velociraptor eggs here in the west? :)
It's actually a medium egg, just the camera angle :)
What kind of thermometer is that?
Edit: it is a noncontact thermometer
Yep, infrared thermometer. We picked our up for 50 RMB (~8 USD) on Taobao, such a great purchase. It's not super super accurate, but good enough for deep-frying.
The temp gun + round bottom wok set-up really takes away 90% of the headache of deep frying. Round bottom wok uses *significantly* less oil (basically the amount you'd need to shallow fry), and the temp gun makes controlling the temperature pretty easy.
"LiYiow Joaww wine" and Nlyong Yau" could be shirts I would buy. :)
Great recipe as always. Any possible substitutes for custard powder in this dish?
Copy pasting my reply to another comment: You can put a knob of butter in the end to achieve a similar result~ EDIT: for custard powder, it's often used in Cantonese desserts, like the runny salty egg yolk bun, baked pudding with sago, and of course, egg tarts. It can also be used in deep frying batter for the color and fragrance.
That egg is huge!
that was a damn big egg!
What is this stock concentrate they keep using? I can't seem to find anything that looks like it in my local Chinese market.
In your reddit post ui ou said this dish came in during the 60s. I wouldn't really call that old school compared the enormous history China has
Fair I suppose, I'd consider it 'old school' because it's less popular nowadays than it was in the 20th century. Stuff that goes back further I'd probably call 'historical' rather than old school, but yeah it's a fair criticism.
How critical is that custard powder to this recipe? All I can seem to find on Amazon is custard powder, in flavors like vanilla or strawberry. And I dont want to buy that huge container for one recipe. Is there a link you can share to the correct product? Thanks. Looks delish!
what about orange peel beef? that's traditional and uses the peel i.e. zest
This is the first time I’ve seen boneless/skinless chicken in Chinese cooking. Looks fantastic, by the way.
Question. What is the difference between shao xing and liao jiu wine in this video? Can liao jiu be substituted with shao xing?
Yes u can. Liao jiu just means cooking wine.
So in China, Shaoxing wine is a better type of wine to use, you can even drink it, while for Liaojiu, it's only used for cooking and it's pretty nasty if you drink it. But in the west, they're not differentiated.
In practice, red wine would work, too.
I (Chris) differentiate them mostly because (A) I am an absurd human being and (B) I love my alcohol.
I remember when I first moved to China a decade or so back... I had my Fuschia Dunlop books in hand (didn't know Chinese at the time), all ready to go to my local market and try my hand at cooking. Meandered around looking for this "Shaoxing wine", and nobody seemed to have it - there were even people that didn't know what I was talking about (probably compounded by my awful Chinese). Eventually, I found this 'liaojiu' stuff, which's what I found that all the other homecooks I met used, and what's referred to in (the vast majority) of recipes you find online in Chinese.
Taking a big step back, all of this stuff - Liaojiu, Shaoxing wine - is a variety of Chinese alcohol called 'Huangjiu'. Huangjiu is (usually) rice fermented with a starter made with red yeast rice. This gives huangjiu its characteristic red color.
There's different grades of Huangjiu - important in cooking are "Shaoxing", "Huadiao", and "Liaojiu". Without going into the weeds too much, Shaoxing and Huadiao are both nice alcohols that range in price from 'really yummy' to 'better for cooking'. Liaojiu, meanwhile, is huangjiu that's made specifically for cooking - usually it has some salt in it, sometimes even a touch of spices.
Here's the deal though: a lot of "Shaoxing wine" that is sold in the West is - if you look at the Chinese characters on the bottle - actually just Liaojiu. Perfectly fine for cooking (in most dishes), but then you'll find some poor souls that think to themselves "hey, I wonder what this Chinese wine actually tastes like?" pour themselves a glass and think to themselves "WTF Chinese wine is terrible". Because of course it is, they just drank salted cooking wine. Actual Shaoxing wine that's meant for drinking is quite yummy (if a little sweet).
These days, we don't actually use Liaojiu anymore, instead using lower end Shaoxing or Huadiao. For the vast, vast majority of dishes though, liaojiu is perfectly fine. If you want to make sure you're getting something nicer, check for a bottle that says it's Huadiao (sometimes written Hua Tiao) - if you're in the supermarket it'll still probably be the sort that's meant for cooking though.
thanks all!
Cornstarch batter is such a pleasant surprise as a celiac! This dish looks super easy to make gf-friendly, which is great 😀
If you're using duck breast, do you cook it all the way through, or leave some colour?
We'd cook it all the way (raw/rare stuff in Chinese cooking is usually a huge exception), but for something like this feel free to cook to your liking.
Why do people dislike these videos? They are the best.
R u new to the internet?
Kranium Dranium no
Can't always blame people since youtube doesnt allow you to change your accidental dislikes.
Not this time on this video - but I have accidentally clicked dislike and had to wait a day to change it to like.
People can dislike stuff for a variety of reasons - production value, something that counters their expectations, something we do that they disagree with, my nasally voice, whatever.
I've actually grown to not mind dislikes, as it generally means that TH-cam is recommending the video to people that aren't our core subscribers. If you look at our vids that're view soaks (e.g. stir fried veg), you'll notice a ton of dislikes... while less popular videos like suancaiyu only have a few.
Because they think lemon chicken isnt authentic chinese, just like they don't think sweet and sour chicken is chinese. Lol
From personal experience those infrared thermometers arent reliable for liquids, try to double check with a normal kitchen thermometer and you'll see.
Yeah they can be off by +/- 5 centigrade from my experience. For deep frying, good enough for government work. You certainly wouldn't want to make candy with them or something.
No MSG? :D
Nah I don't think MSG would really go well here. Sweet and sour isn't really a flavor profile where the ingredient fits in my personal opinion.
Damn it I'm hungry at midnight again :/
That egg looked huge.
I wonder if this is the originator of orange chicken?
You got one for almond soo guy????
Almond vegetarian chicken?
Could you pan fry this instead of deep frying?
Anytime Ive had this, there are slices of water chestnut under the breading. Is that just a My Fave Restaurant thing, or a standard variant? Either way, it looks delicious in all forms!
I think it's a variant~
I’m so mad. I missed this so much as I hadn’t been eating from Chinese takeouts in my area. I finally found one I was up to trying and they just gave me sweat and sour nuggets with an orangey lemon sauce. Not terrible but not like this
1:03 Yo that looks familiar
what is this jauzhi wine?
Chinese cooking wine, Shaoxing.
You could do a general chows chicken with lemon sauce ?
General Tso's is solidly a takeout dish, no Chinese equivalent from what I know of. There's an interesting New Yorker article on the topic, "In Search of General Tso's". If we find any historical Chinese dish that could have inspired it, we would obviously be interested in that :)
That’s the biggest egg I’ve ever seen
Narrator sounds like en Shapiro look up his channel
Curious: Why is this called 西柠鸡 and not 檸檬雞?
Because 檸檬 is sometimes called 西檸 in Cantonese. Grapefruit is called 西柚, etc.
@@thisissteph9834 Interesting. The word "west" doesn't help in dispelling the notion that this was a western invented dish.
@@Obscurai Haha, it's just the lemon that has the word "west" in it. Some places also call it "檸檬雞".
@@thisissteph9834 Indeed, that is how I learned to call it - hence the initial question.
It kinda means that this dish is influenced by the west. (In usual Chinese cooking, we use vinegar醋 for sourness so when you see this dish is made of lemon instead of vinegar you know it is not "pure" Chinese food) another example is 西多士, which is the hk-style of French toast, starts with the character "西"
Hong Kong dish
MMMM LIMINS!!!!!
captions?
You mean Chinese or English?
either? both?
Based American using Celsius
Fahrenheit for weather (0-100F is roughly the range of human experience), Celsius for cooking (100C is a nice benchmark for boiling).
In China people fluently mix the traditional Chinese weight/distance systems with metric. I feel the same can be done with Imperial. Metric has its uses, imperial has its uses. Hate how people get so damn intense about the issue on both sides.
@@ChineseCookingDemystified Ha, yeah, you seem to get worked up on a lot of minor issues, but I know that comes with living in China for a while lol.
I wouldn't say they mix it fluently, you end up having to do a lot of pointless head calculations when they mix imperial and metric in the same shop. Not to mention when Chinese measurements are used.
It was meant to be taken as a joke, though. The channel is awesome and thanks for all the effort put into it.
Haha, you have no idea how many of those pointless "imperial measurements supremacist" comments we get, there's a point where it gets annoying. Life in China is very chilled though btw.
Not a fan of this dish... Tried it before in sort of Chinese restaurant before and it was such a traumatic experience
Maybe i should try to make it myself
I can see why you might feel like that. I was definitely caught off guard when tasting this dish from a cheap takeaway shop for the first time, the sauce was too strong and had a radioactive yellow colour to it lmao.
@@kraniumdranium1364 :D
You know I mean I've watched many of your videos and really like them, but I'd really want you guys to try the dishes and tell us how they taste, how's the texture, why we should be interested in making them, I don't know it feels anticlimactic to end with the bowl of food you just made and not eat it