The last time I wrote about kung pao chicken was almost four years ago, in July of 2008. I was living in Beijing at the time, and kung pao chicken had been designated the official dish of the 2008 Summer Olympics. It was easy to prepare, more filling than a Clif Bar, and sports venues could even sell it in the stands.
I’ve made the dish countless times since then, teaching it in classes, and refining it for my upcoming cookbook. Because I have an exciting announcement coming in the next couple of days related to this dish, I’m posting a revised recipe for you to try at home, with a tastier sauce and more streamlined directions. And stay tuned in the next couple of days for more news! (Update: see the Kung Pao Recipe Chicken Kit collaboration with our friends at GrubKit!)
Kung pao chicken, known by most fans as a Sichuan dish, has a much-debated origin within China. One popular theory is that Ding Baozhen, a Qing Dynasty governor in Sichuan province, tried it at a Sichuan restaurant and liked it so much that the dish was named after his official title, Gong Bao (which became “Kung Pao” in English). Others, however, dispute its origin in Sichuan, claiming the governor brought it from his childhood home in Guizhou province. Whichever the case, the important thing is that this highly addictive stir-fried chicken continues to be one of the most popular Chinese dishes in China as well as America.
The succulent, complex sauce of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors is hard to pass up. One faux-pas restaurants in the U.S. sometimes make is adding tons of vegetatables like bell peppers and broccoli. The main protein, blistered chilis, and peanuts should be stars. Chunks of vegetables get in the way in terms of both flavor and appearance.
For years, Americanized versions of kung pao chicken also left out the Sichuan peppercorns because of an import ban, which is a shame since the numbing spiciness (“mala” in Chinese) is integral to the dish. Now, fortunately, Sichuan peppercorn is once again easily found in Chinatown shops and even gourmet chains like Whole Foods.
So pick up some chicken on your way home from work and try this out. I guarantee this tastes better than any takeout kung pao chicken you may have tried.
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Kung Pao Chicken
Serves 4 as part of a multi-course meal
- 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast or thighs, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
- 8 to 10 dried red chilis
- 5 scallions, white and green parts separated and thinly sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon minced or grated ginger
- ¼ cup unsalted dry-roasted peanuts
Marinade:
- 1 tablespoon soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
- 1 ½ teaspoons cornstarch
Sauce:
- 1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar, or substitute good-quality balsamic vinegar
- 1 teaspoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon hoisin sauce
- 1 teaspoon sesame oil
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon ground Sichuan pepper
- Marinate the chicken: In a medium bowl, stir together the soy sauce, rice wine, and cornstarch until the cornstarch is dissolved. Add the chicken and toss to coat. Let stand for 10 minutes.
- Prepare the sauce: In another bowl, combine the vinegar, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, sugar, cornstarch, and Sichuan pepper. Stir until the sugar and cornstarch is dissolved and set aside.
- You may need to turn on your stove’s exhaust fan, because stir-frying dried chilis on high heat can get a little smoky. Heat a wok or large skillet over high heat until a bead of water sizzles and evaporates on contact. Add the peanut oil and swirl to coat the base. Add the chilis and stir-fry for about 30 seconds, until the chilis have just begun to blacken and the oil is slightly fragrant. Add the chicken and stir-fry until no longer pink, about 2 to 3 minutes.
- Add the scallion whites, garlic, and ginger, and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Pour in the sauce and mix to coat the other ingredients. Stir in the peanuts and cook for another 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to a serving plate, sprinkle the scallion greens on top, and serve.
Here in Los Angeles California, at the 99 Ranch Market, I am able to purchase Sichuan (aka: Szechuan, Szechwan, and Sichwan) Chiles, in a clear cellophane bag. These chiles, somewhat shaped like small Chinese lanterns, have an excellent flavor. More to the point, their heat does not last on the tongue for more than a moment.
I wonder if there was an official food for the Atlanta or Salt Lake City games.
Very authentic recipe…can’t wait to try it!
Apparently MacDonald’s has been the Official Restaurant for the Summer and Winter Games since 2000.
We made this to celebrate opening night of the Olympics – excellent!
Hahaha, re: the contacts, I’ve done the same thing!
I posted on the version of this recipe from Grace Young’s Breath of a Wok, although I much prefer the Land of Plenty version.
I find that my sichuan peppercorns burn if i add them first, so I’ve taken to grinding them and adding them later in the recipe.
Do you have any other Land of Plenty recipes to recommend?
This looks wicked good, I managed to find some sichuan peppers corns and I am going to make it soon. Do you remove the chilis from this before you serve it or do you leave them in and eat them? If you leave them in, why be worried about seeds popping out?
Oliver – Try the mapo doufu and the sweet and sour red peppers, two of my favorites!
Bob – You just leave the chilis in when serving. Whole chilis tend a smoky flavor and a bit of tingly spiciness. It’s very rare that the seeds will pop out, but some people worry about that happening and making the dish overwhelmingly spicy. I say don’t worry about it.
And a lot more authentic than the recipes I’ve found elsewhere online. I just discovered this blog and find myself overwhelmed with all the recipes I want to try cooking.
What an awesome recipe! And the pictures are absolutely gorgeous. Well done! I’ll definitely be firing up the wok to give this recipe a try.
I thought kung pao always had fermented chili paste and bean sauce in it?
marc – The sauce for Sichuan Kung Pao is pretty light, absent of fermented beans and chili paste. Mapo tofu, on the other hand, does have fermented both of the above.
From what I gather, this recipe is fantastic. I get nervous trying new cooking and new foods, but this looks so darn good! *runs to the fridge* :)
Tried your kung pao chicken recipe earlier for supper. I have to say it is THE best recipe I have found so far and it is def a keeper for our family. Everyone loves the kung pao chicken. Thanks for posting such an awesome authentic recipe.
A conveninet way to make a tasty Kungo Pao chicken dish is to use a recipe kit that contains the sauces and marinades in it – and add your fresh ingredients.
thanks for this recipe! I made it for dinner and it was authentic and fantastic. We like it hot and a little more saucy so I doubled up on the sauce ingredients and the dried chilis and cut each in half (didn’t remove the seeds). yum!
Thanks for taking the time to share my favorite recipe. Your Kung Pao Chicken recipe seems much simpler than what I am using.
I had never bought Szechuan peppercorns before, so this was my inaugural recipe, since so many others of yours have been good. ZOWIE, that first bite is intense. Sweet, hot, mind-searing, lip-numbing intense. WAY too hot, I thought. But let me try a bit more. OK, maybe a bit more.
Let’s just say that I’m glad my wife isn’t a big eater and that it was too hot for her. I finished mine, and packed hers for my lunch tomorrow.
That is SO SO SO good.
I now make this regularly… well, a version of it. The garlic is up to 20 cloves now, with a volume of ginger to match and the scallions lagging behind a little. I use no cornstarch, thicken the sauce with peanuts-only peanut butter and sweeten it with sucralose to reduce the carbs, use rather more rice wine (or very dry sherry) and soy sauce for the marinade, use brown sorghum vinegar rather than rice sometimes… I’ve experimented with various small peppers that I can get easily from the Mexican brand suppliers (chiles arbol work well, chiles japones are too mild but work if you use a LOT and eat them rather than set them aside when you eat the dish), tried slitting them open and removing the seeds or not. (On the longer, cayenne-type peppers I prefer to remove the seeds.) The Sichuan peppers are up to a heaping tablespoon, and picking through them to remove those annoyingly crunchy and essentially flavorless seeds (it’s faster to discard any “Pac-Man” shaped fruits that haven’t let go of the seed, but thrift makes me waste time removing the seeds). Enough sweetness and vinegar really improve the balance of this dish for me.
Probably I’m committing atrocities on the recipe, but I like the results of them…
Made the Kung Pao recipe tonight for dinner… Very good! I made double the sauce recipe because I like mine a little more moist. Flavors were excellent. Don’t worry about the whole chilies. Just warn your eaters to watch out for them! I served the kung pao with the dan dan mian, which was in my opinion the star of the meal! It made it with some pork shoulder that I had ground coarsely with my meat grinder. I found fresh chinese egg noodles in my local Asian market in the freezer section. The fresh noodles made all the difference. Kudos on the two recipes!
Mark – No worries. Recipes are meant to be altered to suit your tastebuds. I’m interested in experimenting with Mexican chiles myself in this dish…
Matt – Thanks! Glad you enjoyed both.
Hi Diana, I’ve been using a lot of your recipes and find them pretty easy to make here in China compared to other so-called Chinese recipes in English which require ingredients that aren’t readily sold in China! Among others, your Sichuan dry-fried green beans/干煸豆角 recipe is almost perfect. So I’d like to say thanks.
But I’d also like to point out that it’s not just Americans who ruin the classical chicken + peanuts + peppers harmony of kung pao. I live in north China, and nearly all 家常菜/homestyle versions of the dish feature big chunks of green pepper, cucumber, carrot, and/or bamboo. Go to a Sichuan restaurant, conversely, and it’s spice heaven with little veggies to sweeten it up.
In my own version of kung pao (link to a picture), which is pretty close to yours, I toss in some chopped rolls of “big onion” (大葱) at the end, which adds texture and flavor to the dish. I stole, um, borrowed this touch from a north China Sichuan restaurant chain which, strangely, no longer sells kung pao chicken, but offers a mean kung pao shrimp.
This recipe is fantastic,i love Kung Pao Chicken,idont know why other recipes have to ommit the sechuan peppercorns cause thats what makes the dish,thats what gives the pow in pau.
THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU
I am loving your website, getting to read about the history of the dishes, different versions, which ingredients to buy, recipes, and the pictures too….it is wonderful, thank you so much!
I tried this receipe last while my wife was out of town. It was easy and yummy and she loved the left overs when she got home.
Hi, long-time fan of your site, tho never got around to trying a recipe until yesterday. Made this one. Annoyed with self as assumed I had ingredients and then had to made a few subs — minor except couldn’t believe I had no red chiles! C’mon! (a desperate woman, I diced up a jalapeno, knowing no way would it be remotely the same. I considered red chile flakes but too chunky for my taste. ). Miraculously, the overall *flavor* was still very good. Unfortunately, the dish was nevertheless near inedible because of the Szechuan peppercorns. I can’t figure out why, exactly. It was like crunching down on gravel and grit.
To salvage the chicken (and at cost of losing the lovely ginger-garlic-scallion sauced bits), I had to try to pick out the peppercorns. Impossible to get off all the little bits which had broken off and stuck to chicken or to the goodies.
What could have caused this? Peppercorns being old? Overcooked? Only sauteed a minute or so before moving on with recipe. When buying the Szechuan peppercorns (in USA), is there any way to tell whether old? They’re dry looking already, and most packages don’t have mfg or best-by dates.
I want to make the dish again when I have all the right ingredients(and for sure the dang chiles!), but … I don’t want to risk another gravel fiasco. So disappointing. The few times I’ve cooked with Szechuan peppercorns in past, I crushed them (but didn’t finely grind, so there would have been bits the same same as the pieces which broke off in this this dish. Never experienced crystal-sharp gritty crunch with those.. Waaah. I like the flavor of Szechuan peppercorns. Any thoughts as to why the peppercorns were a disaster?
Dee – I’m sorry to hear about that. When you buy whole Sichuan peppercorn in packages, what you’re actually buying is the whole husks, which is the reddish outside of the peppercorn. Unfortunately, sometimes the black seeds find their way into the packages, and they’re what accounts for the gritty taste. The next time you buy whole Sichuan peppercorn, just make sure to discard any black seeds before grinding them up. Or you can substitute ground Sichuan pepper for this and other recipes. Frontier Natural Products also sells whole Sichuan peppercorns in a grinder, so you can grind as you need, which I find much more fragrant than pre-ground Sichuan pepper. (It can be found at Whole Foods and other natural food stores.) Hope this helps, and let me know if you have other questions!
Diana, thanks for replying. This matters to me because I love these peppers and want to play with other recipes using them. You know, after posting here, I read about those black seeds but then trying to pick all of them out of the bag of peppercorns … ei yi yi yi. There were also small twigs/stem in varying sizes. Someone else said I should have toasted the peppercorns and then ground them, but your recipe here (and others I’ve seen elsewhere which call for whole Sichuan peppercorns) doesn’t mention toasting or grinding. Should I toast/grind even if recipe only says “whole” peppercorns?
Thanks for the tip on Frontier Natural Products — surely those would be picked over and free of the black seeds! :-) I will try those, at minimum. I was thinking of going to Penzey’s to buy peppercorns as heard they were good quality. Mine were kind of old, but sounds as if maybe they weren’t the best quality to begin with.
A tip about hot stuff staying on your fingers – use oil like olive oil to rub your hands in them to take off the “hot oil”. I’m very sensitive to the oils that come off of even a jalapeno pepper and it will sting me for days on end. But I find that this trick really works much better than soap or milk. Just a helpful suggestion!
Sounds delicious. I’ll have to look out for the sichuan peppercorns next time I’m at whole foods!
Diana: this is a winner and keeper! I am so excited for your news. (I have been so busy with work lately that have had barely time for anything…hence my silence for a bit, but I have been thinking about you and looking forward to seeing you release the book)
Hi…Just to let you know, I really like your blog and nominated it for a Beautiful Blog Award.
(excellent looking Kung Pao BTW)
Hi,
I stumbled upon our website from Pinterest. I have made two of your dishes thus week and they been a massive hit. Thank you for inspiring me to again cook Chinese food and try new recipes.
Made this tonight… used sherry instead of rice wine and balsamic instead of black vinegar, but other than that it was the same. Only thing I had an issue with is the Wok temperature. Heated it, water beaded, added the oil, added the chiles, and they were black within 10 seconds. Added the chicken and then the other ingredients, and everything seemed to burn. I thought a Wok is supposed to be mega hot, but seems like it was too hot. This was a trial run…used hand cut pieces from bone-in chicken thigh (suggestion to everyone, do NOT use breast). Going to try it again with a less hot Wok. Also, would like to try with beef–what cut?
Dave – I sometimes have problems with my burners being too powerful and hot too, which is why it’s safer to stick with a medium-high temperature on high-powered burners, especially if you’re using a wok instead of a skillet.
With beef, I’d suggest a cut with a good amount of marbling, such as flank steak, flatiron steak, or skirt steak. I would toss in the freezer for about 20 minutes or so (which makes the beef easier for slicing) then slice against the grain to the thickness of about 1/4 of an inch. You can marinate it the same way and the amount of stir-frying time would be about 1 or 2 minutes less. Hope that helps!
Thank you for the WONDERFUL recipe! I made it at a party and it was a huge hit! Now I am excited to try your other recipes…
Thanks! Jen
I love seeing photos of each step – thanks for this delicious recipe! I think we’ll be making it soon…