I’ve actually never seen Mongolian chicken anywhere in China. It’s an American Chinese food in my mind, but it’s inauthenticity doesn’t make it any less delicious, as proven by it’s most profitable purveyor in the US: P.F. Chang’s. Usually, I see this dish with dried red chilies, which are tempered with the rest of the aromats, but my grocery store didn’t have any this week, and I find that the dish isn’t lacking in flavor without them. My recipe also has a little more ginger, cut slightly larger instead of grated, and about twice as many green onions as I usually see. The result is a deeply umami, slightly sweet, sleek and sticky lick-your-fingers flavor bomb as well as a textural journey of crunchy chicken mingling with tiny pops of green onion, effectively offset by a fluffy cloud of white rice. In the absence of a vegetable, this dish could be a bit cloying, which is why I upped the amount of ginger; it adds just the right amount of freshness so as not to detract from the well known flavor profile of this dish, but to just hum in the background as a way of harmonizing the other strong flavors.
The trick to this dish is, of course, to get the chicken nice and crunchy, and then to eat it immediately after it’s been tossed in the sauce. If it sits in the wok for too long afterward, it steams and the wonderful crunch you worked so hard for disappears. It’ll still taste great, but you’ll definitely leave the meal wishing you hadn’t waited to dig in. The crunch of the chicken and the amount of sauce used is completely unrelated as well. The only thing that will soften the crispy cornstarch coating is time, so don’t waste any!
Butter Count: It’s Chinese food….
SAUCE:
1.5 Tbsp cornstarch
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup light sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
2 tsp dark soy sauce
2 tsp sesame oil
CHICKEN:
1lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 Tbsp Chinkiang vinegar
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/3 cup vegetable oil
7 cloves garlic, minced
2-inch knob ginger, peeled and minced
5 green onions, sliced into 1-inch sections, whites and greens separated
Sesame seeds for garnish
Instructions:
To prepare the sauce, combine the cornstarch and water in a bowl and mix it into a slurry. Add the remaining sauce ingredients and set aside.
To prepare the chicken, add it to a large bowl with the Chinkiang vinegar. Toss to coat. Add the 1/2 cup cornstarch to the chicken and toss thoroughly to coat. Add more cornstarch if the initial 1/2 cup gets fully absorbed by the liquids. The chicken should be fully coated, dry, and powdery.
To cook the chicken, add the vegetable oil to a large wok or heavy bottomed pot, over the highest heat possible.
Add one of the cut sections of green onion. When it starts to bubble furiously, add 1/3 of the chicken. Separate the chicken cubes into a single layer and cook 3 minutes until deeply browned. Turn each piece of chicken over and cook an additional 3 minutes, turning the heat down slightly if it starts burning unpleasantly. Finish the cook with a minute of vigorous stirring. Transfer the cooked chicken to a paper towel-lined plate.
Repeat Step 4 with the next 1/3 of the chicken, then again with the remaining 1/3 until all of the chicken is cooked and set aside on the paper towel-lined plate.
In the same wok, still over high heat, add the garlic, ginger, and white sections of green onion. Stir vigorously for about one minute, until nicely fragrant but not browning.
Re-stir the sauce to combine it back into a slurry (the cornstarch will have settled by this time) and quickly add it to the wok. Stir the contents of the wok vigorously until the sauce has thickened, and basically moves as one gloopy mass when the wok is jostled.
Add the cooked chicken and green sections of green onion. Toss to combine.
Garnish with sesame seeds and serve immediately with white rice.