Name: Kung Pao Chicken
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 23 min
Yield: 2 servings
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 300 g Chicken thigh (or breast); 60 g Roasted peanuts; 8 Dried red chilies; 1 Green onion; 3 cloves Garlic; 1 tsp Ginger; 1 tsp Sichuan peppercorns; 2 tbsp Cooking oil; 1 tbsp Soy sauce; 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine (or mirin); 1 tbsp Cornstarch; 1.5 tbsp Soy sauce; 1 tbsp Black vinegar (or vinegar); 1 tbsp Sugar; 1 tsp Cornstarch; 3 tbsp Water

Ingredients

2servings

Chicken thigh (or breast) · 2cm cubes300 g
Roasted peanuts60 g
Dried red chilies · snipped8
Green onion · 2cm pieces1
Garlic · sliced3 cloves
Ginger · minced1 tsp
Sichuan peppercorns · optional, for mala1 tsp
Cooking oil2 tbsp
Chicken marinade
Soy sauce1 tbsp
Shaoxing wine (or mirin)1 tbsp
Cornstarch1 tbsp
Sauce
Soy sauce1.5 tbsp
Black vinegar (or vinegar)1 tbsp
Sugar1 tbsp
Cornstarch1 tsp
Water3 tbsp

Steps

Cube the chicken and toss with the marinade (soy, wine, cornstarch); rest 10 minutes.
⏲ 10 min
Stir all the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl (sugar, vinegar, soy, cornstarch, water).
⏲ 1 min
Heat a wok or pan over high heat with oil, spread in the chicken, and stir-fry until golden, then push to one side or remove.
⏲ 4 min
In the same pan, fry the dried chilies and Sichuan peppercorns over low heat 30 seconds until fragrant (don't burn them or they turn bitter).
⏲ 30 sec
Add the garlic, ginger, and green onion, then return the chicken and stir-fry over high heat.
⏲ 1 min 30 sec
Pour in the sauce and toss quickly until glossy and coated, turn off the heat, and stir in the peanuts. Serve with rice.
⏲ 1 min 30 sec

Variations

Milder: Use fewer chilies and skip the peppercorns for a kid-friendly version.
Shrimp or pork: Swap the chicken for shrimp or pork.
More veg: Add bell pepper, celery, or bamboo shoots for crunch.
Cashews: Use cashews instead of peanuts.

Tips

Stir-fry fast over high heat so the chicken stays tender and veg crisp.
Fry the chilies and peppercorns over low heat for aroma only — burnt = bitter.
Premix the sauce and add it all at once for even coating.
Add the peanuts at the end to keep them crunchy.
A cornstarch marinade velvets the chicken so it stays moist.

More detail and the reasons why (4)

Why a cornstarch marinade keeps the chicken moist. What the starch does is what it does in a sauce (thickening a sauce), only on the outside of the meat instead of in the liquid: the swelling band is 60-75°C, and a wet film of it on a cube crosses that band in its first seconds in the wok. It sets into a gel skin, and the meat's water is then behind something.
And the starch is in this pan twice, doing two separate jobs. Step 1 puts it on the chicken, where it must stay soft and wet and must never colour. Step 2 mixes more of it into the sauce, where it must thicken. Same tin, ten minutes apart, opposite objectives — and the one on the meat, unlike a deep-frying coating, is not there to become crisp.
The sauce is mixed in a bowl because a wok gives you no "between". Thickening says to mix starch cold and then boil it, since dry starch tipped into hot liquid gelatinises on the outside first and seals dry powder inside a lump — Japanese curry rice is built on that principle. There is no moment in a four-minute stir-fry to stand and make a slurry. Seasoning runs into the same wall from the other side: one thing at a time, tasting after each (balancing flavour), assumes a pot you can lean over. So the sugar, vinegar and soy are settled in a bowl before the burner is lit, and "add it all at once" is that decision seen from the other end.
The thirty seconds at low heat is the whole window, and the peppercorn does not go in at the same point in every dish. The buzz is hydroxy-alpha-sanshool, an alkylamide — closer to touch than to taste (chilli and heat) — and woken in oil as a dried spice, Sichuan pepper puts the tingle out in front of the dish, which is this position exactly. Mala xiang guo adds its peppercorns off the heat; dan dan noodles toasts them dry and grinds them for the end. What differs is the pan each is standing over. A dry stir-fry held at maximum wok heat has nowhere gentle to put them, and ground pepper cannot be fried at all — blooming spices gives ground spice about thirty seconds in hot fat. Here the burner is deliberately brought down between two high-heat stages, which buys a pool of moderate oil that then carries the aroma into everything the sauce touches.

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