Chinese Chicken Recipes With Earthly Flavors

Hello, Foodies of Hive!

It's been a while since I posted a food blog here. Recently, I've been yearning for Chinese Chicken recipes and so I opted to cook some. In this blog, I'll be sharing how to cook these two of my favorite Chinese recipes. They are very simple and easy to cook.

The first one has a lot of natural ingredients that make it a healthy one. They are dried and preserved ingredients though and you can buy them in Chinese stores.

Chinese Steamed Chicken with earthly flavors

These dried ingredients consist:

Shiitake mushroom
Wood ear mushroom
Lily buds
Red dates
Goji berries/Wolfberries
Some spring onions and ginger

For marinating the chicken, you only need:

Dark and light soy sauce
Oyster sauce
Rice wine
Flour (for sauce thickener)
Black or white pepper (optional)
Sesame oil (optional)

Some are adding sesame oil to add more fragrance, and some are adding sugar, but red dates and goji berries are already sweet, so there is no need to add sugar anymore.

The procedure is just so easy as you only need to steam the chicken after all preparations.

Soak all dry ingredients until softened and precook the soaked wood ear mushroom.
Cut the chicken into small pieces, and slice the shiitake mushroom and red dates into half and ginger into julienne.
Marinate the chicken using the marinating sauces and leave for about half an hour.

Mix all ingredients with the marinated chicken in a big steaming bowl.
Steam the chicken in a huge wok for 20 to 30 minutes.
Sprinkle spring onions on top of the chicken 2 minutes before you dish it out of the wok.
Serve while it's hot. Perfect pair with rice.

And here's the finished product.

The dried ingredients have unique aromas and I love the earthly flavors of the mushrooms. The sweet flavors of the berries and red dates compliments well with other ingredients. It is better to put more ginger too to add some spiciness to the flavor.

You guys should try this and is very healthy too.

From a healthy chicken recipe, let's have a flavorful one.

Soy Sauce Chicken Wings

You can use fresh mid-joint chicken wings or frozen ones. But I usually use frozen chicken wings here. You can choose those hormone-free and organic frozen chickens.

Ingredients:

Mid-joint chicken wings
Soy sauce
Rice wine
Rock sugar
Ginger

There are several ways to cook this classical Chinese soy sauce chicken wings recipe, but I opted to do the easy one.

Boil the chicken in boiling water with ginger for a few minutes. This process helps to easily remove the blood inside the chicken wings. Meanwhile, the ginger would help to remove the smell of the chicken.
After boiling, squeeze out the blood and rinse with tap water. Let them dry in a strainer.

In a non-stick pan, saute the ginger for a few seconds then add chicken wings.
Add enough amount of water, then add soy sauce, rice wine, and rock sugar, according to your taste preference.
Turn the fire to medium-low and let it simmer until the sauce thickens. Stir occasionally so both sides of chicken wings will be well coated with sauce.

And here's the finished product.

The other way of cooking soy sauce chicken requires an ample amount of time because you need to leave the chicken in the sauce for a few hours before serving. It has a lighter texture and the sauce is not thick as this one. The longer the time you leave the chicken in the sauce, the tastier the chicken. The sauce can also be saved and used for marinating chicken. If you want easy cooking, you can try this procedure.

These chicken recipes are often served in most Chinese restaurants, either with rice or noodles. But I would prefer to eat these with rice.

If you have the given ingredients above, why don't you try them?