Transcription
Here we go. Too big of a bite. All right, here we go. Set up.
What's up, folks? Jet Tila here and this is Ready Jet Cook, where I break down how to make my favorite Asian dishes like a pro from market to plate. And today, we are rocking the walk with sesame chicken, a Chinese American takeout stir fry that makes a great late night snack. But before we jump into this, go ahead and subscribe so you don't miss out on the amazing dishes we've got for you this season. All right, let's get this stir fry started.
Sesame chicken is all about the perfect balance between crispy chicken, sauce, and aromatics. I'm going to show you how to get maximum sesame flavor into this two different ways. Starting with white toasted sesame seeds. So untoasted sesame seeds have zero sesame flavor. Believe it or not, it takes the toasting to coax out all that amazing aroma. Believe it or not, this is that one place where the storebought is going to give you better flavor than trying to do it at home.
Next, I'm going to show you everything you need to build your sauce. First, I need to grab some sesame oil since it is sesame chicken. But not all sesame is the same. You're always going to want to look for toasted or roasted sesame oil. And it's going to have this nice dark color. All the flavor is unlocked from sesame when you toast it. And that holds true for the seeds and the oil. Because it's such an aromatic oil. You don't want to use it for frying or like starting a pan or a walk cuz it has a very low smoke point. It's very volatile. Usually use it sparingly, but not in this recipe cuz you want big sesame and sesame chicken.
So next we're going to grab some dark soy. The world of soy sauce, especially in the Asian market, can be daunting. Remember a few keys here. Chinese soy sauce because it's a Chinese dish. Dark soy is different than light soy because it's thicker. It's more viscous. It's brewed down but has less salt and sometimes it has a little molasses so it coats really well. Anytime you need like a dark brown sauce, reach for dark soy sauce. I got to check out and get cooking.
Sesame chicken is not an old school Chinese dish. It's actually a new school dish popularized in Chinese American restaurants. I did not grow up eating this dish, but it is a dish that I've grown to love over the years, especially after a night out.
So, we're starting with chicken thighs, which in my opinion is the perfect part of the chicken for deep frying because it's moist. It has just enough fat in will not dry out. It's pretty fried, bulletproof. One thing to look out for with thighs is sometimes they have these little pieces of fat or connective tissue. Feel free to cut them off. So, take that knife at an angle and just get rid of those. Ally hates these little pieces of connective tissue, so I just cut them out for her. If it was me or Amaya, we would probably just leave them in there, but probably smarter uh to take them out.
So, I'm starting with a boneless thigh. It come from the store this way. This is a big old tile in my opinion. So, if you take a tile down to a slice, and in this case, it's a 1 in slice, and then you take these slices into 1in dices, it's very, very simple. Now, anytime you're cutting anything in the kitchen, make sure they're all even pieces to guarantee even cooking. So, you see this little piece of fat? I don't want it. A tile, 1in slice, 1in dice, and there it is.
While this is not an authentic Chinese dish, it does use a very authentic ingredient, which is sesame seeds. And we use sesame in so many forms. It's uh roasted, unroasted. We make it into paste. It's also used in savory and sweet dishes. One of those favorite things at dim sum is that little sesame crispy bow. Really a great example of how versatile sesame is. And as you can see, I'm covering my wood board with a plastic or sometime referred to as a gel board uh to not cross-contaminate. So, I'm keeping my proteins on the gel board and my vegetables on a separate board.
All right, all the chicken is done. I need a bowl to marinate it all in. That goes in there. And now I can clean and sanitize myself before the velvety.
So, next I'm going to start the marinade to the chicken. I'm starting with water, sesame oil for sesame chicken. We're going to be layering sesame in a few different places. Chicken powder, and then finally, some oyster sauce. The goal here is twofold. Number one, get some flavor into this chicken. Number two, the oyster sauce will also help kind of give it that rich, dark color. So, I'm going to massage this for about 30 seconds. The water is going to help us develop a crust because I'm going to start bringing in the flowers.
Now, I'm just creating my version of a classic uh crispy dredge or or or coating. A dredge is basically a dry flour mix to coat the protein, but I'm going to show you how to use it also for the crust. My secret is corn starch and flour. I think the cornstarch lightens it up and the protein in the flour kind of gives you that crispiness. So, it's kind of the best of both worlds. I'm going to mix these together really, really well. I'm taking the wet marinated chicken. I'm placing it in that kind of dredge, getting it coated. The moisture on the chicken is actually grabbing those bits of cornstarch and flour, and that's going to become our coating or the fry. If you've ever fried chicken, this is what we call the shag, which is going to be nice crispy bits. the more uneven and the more crusty that is, the more crispy it's going to be post fry. So, I just like to work in batches. It's okay to make sure the chicken's really wet. In fact, I can throw a little more water in here if I want a little bit of a thicker crust. So, what I do is I make a little well. And this just gives me the option to almost like double crust. So, you can see already dredged, little more wet, back in the dredge. And I'm just getting a thicker crust that way. And I'm working into a sheet pan so the crust has a chance to adhere and thicken up, dry up, which means it'll fry even crispier. So, I'm going to save my flour for another crispy trick, and I'll show you in a second. This will go away, and it's time to build our sauce.
Pretty simple here. So, in a bowl, I'm going to combine ketchup, honey, vinegar, brown sugar. I'm going to make a little bit of a slurry right here. So, all a slurry is is equal parts corn starch and water. Dark soy. Remember, sesame chicken needs a lot of sesame flavor, so more of that sesame oil. Chicken powder. and then oyster sauce. If you find yourself really falling in love and making this dish a lot, make like five or 10 times this, put it in a squeeze bottle and you've got instant sesame chicken sauce at your disposal. So, there's your sesame chicken sauce ready to go.
All you need to prep for the aromatic side is some garlic cloves and ginger. Garlic cloves, lay it flat, smash it flat, and give it a nice kind of tight pass. keep it kind of chunky. I do like this on the larger side because I think it fries up and eats deliciously and it won't burn that way.
So, as for ginger, I'm going to start by peeling the ginger. And I like to square off and flatten the ginger. Use the back of my knife and just rub the back of the knife onto the ginger body. It'll pull that ginger skin right off. That gives me that kind of 1 in piece that's easily measurable now. And then remember the Jet Tila cutting rhyme. A tile becomes a slice. A slice becomes a dice. So nice thin tiles. Tiles on top of each other. So you could leave them in these blades of grass as well if you like ginger. But if you want to taste ginger and not necessarily feel those long pieces of ginger, just finish the little mints that I'm doing here.
All right, so my sesame chicken is almost ready to fry, but I'm going to show you one last trick to make it even more crispy. I've preheated my frying oil in a large Dutch oven, so it's ready to go. I like to use a neutral oil. Vegetable, corn, canola, avocado, any of those are great. Do not use sesame oil or olive oil. They just have too much flavor and they burn at too low of a temperature. In my restaurants, we make sesame chicken in one walk because we have so much heat on that jet burner. At home, you don't have that much firepower. So, I love this method of frying in a Dutch oven and then finishing this dish in a separate walker pan. I'm organizing my fry station to be nice and neat and efficient. So, I'm going to put my hot oil close as possible to the chicken in the middle.
Okay. So, remember that extra flour. Now, we're going to use it for a little bit of a thin batter to finish frying this chicken. So, this technique is very similar to tempura making where I would call this tempura water in the Japanese kitchen. Now I'm going to grab a few pieces at a time, roll it in this kind of a thin slurry, and watch how it starts to fry. That's perfect right there. So the shag or that buildup of flour, which will become crust, is adhered. Now I'm rolling it into kind of the wet batter, and that's going to fry on and lock all that crispiness in. Once you kind of get a feel, you can do a few pieces at a time. Making sure though to never overwhelm this oil. You always want to see constant rate of bubbles and that means it's frying up nicely. And you want to make sure using a spider to start pulling these pieces apart and letting them fry up into individual pieces. I like to fry these chicken pieces at 375. It's going to take about 4 to 6 minutes, but they'll be perfectly cooked through and super crunchy. Oil is maintaining the heat well. I'm going to start loading it with a few more pieces. An important note here is this batter is pretty sticky. So once you lay a few pieces of chicken in, make sure to separate them as they cook so each piece has the maximum amount of surface area of batter so it fries up nice and crispy.
All right, so my first batch is in. I have a wire rack over a half sheet to grab all these pieces of fried chicken and let them still stay crispy. Look at that. That's what I'm looking for right there. All right, first batch done. Super crispy.
The technique of sesame chicken is very similar to those other favorites that you love like orange chicken or sweet and sour chicken where we first fry the nugget, make a sauce, and then bring it all together in a walk. I mean, I like to call this category of dishes sticky, crunchy deliciousness. Don't worry about perfect golden brown like fried chicken golden brown because you have that amazing sauce that's really going to give the color and the sheen to this dish. I've got my crispy chicken nuggets. I've got my sesame sauce. I've got my misplas. We're going to grab the walk and finish this dish up. If you're not making sesame chicken immediately, hold these chicken pieces in a 300°ree oven until you're ready to cook.
So, to finish the sesame chicken, first thing I'm going to do is put oil in this hot walk. And we're going to cook up that ginger and garlic. We're just going to lightly perfume the two. And then I'm going to pour my sauce right in. So, knowing that this chicken is crispy, I don't want to sogg out that crust. And the way to do it is to cook the water out of this sauce. The cornstarch activates, the sugar caramelizes, and the water evaporates. So, by the time the chicken nuggets go in, there's no water to make it soggy. Sugar and fat do not make crispy things soggy. It's water. So, I'm looking for small bubbles in this sauce. I can feel with my spatula that it's tightening up and thickening up. And that's the time I'm going to add my chicken.
So, the sauce is ready. Time to add the chicken. This is our final chance to reinforce all that sesame flavor. And we're going to do that with a nice hit of the sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds. And this is where you're going to fold and then toss. Look at that. This is when it turns from already delicious to that coated sweet crunchy treat. I've got perfect coverage. I've got crispy bits. Let's turn that off. And now I'm going to do that final hit of sesame seeds to stick all over. Platters down. Check out the chicken. Nothing is sticking. It looks perfect. Let's get it right onto the platter. Come on. Look at that. That's better than take out. And you made it at home. Now remember, it's twice fried, so it's going to be a little hot, so be careful. Oh man, it is crispy. It is umami. It is sweet. It is sesame. That flavor of sesame really comes through from the oil and the seeds. This definitely is one of my favorite dishes. I hope you enjoyed learning how to make this Chinese American takeout classic sesame chicken. Give this dish a try and let me know how it turns out by leaving a comment. And make sure you subscribe to Food Network's channel. And I'll see you back here for another episode of Ready Jet Cook.