Chinese Recipes | Cooking Tips | Good Eats

So sad that summer is over. With daylight saving, sunset seems so early. I had so much fun barbecueing chicken wings at the beach during summer. This three-ingredient soy sauce chicken was the most used form of marinate for my chicken wings. Overnight marinating would infuse more flavor into the chicken, but for this time round, I only marinated the chicken wings for 15 minutes or so. It still tasted great, eating in the comforts of home.

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This chicken recipe is so easy and delicious, it’s one of my favorites. The Chinese mushrooms come in a can and look like button mushrooms, but are brown in color and are smaller. They are very sweet and can be used for other vegetable stir-fries or to add to chicken soup.

Ingredients (2-3 servings)

4 large chicken wings, cut into sections
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp oyster sauce
3/4 cup water
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/4 can Chinese button mushrooms, whole
4 pcs rock sugar

Method:

1. Marinate chicken wings in dark soy sauce for 15 minutes or more.

2. Mix oyster sauce with water in a separate bowl.

3. Heat 1-2 tbsp vegetable oil in a saucepan. Medium heat. When oil is hot, add garlic. When garlic is fragrant, add chicken wings and mushrooms.

4. Add oyster sauce–water mixture. Bring to a boil, then lower heat, put on the lid of the saucepan and simmer the chicken wings for about 20 minutes.

5. Add rock sugar and stir to dissolve.

6. Serve with plain steamed jasmine white rice. Gravy from the oyster sauce chicken can be used to drizzle over the rice.

It’s hard to make delicious satay if you do not have a charcoal grill and lots of oil, because the taste is just different. The best satay I have tried so far is Fatman Satay from Lau Pa Sat.

When the craving hits, I’d try any possible satay recipe I can get my hands on! I found this Chinese recipe from Nicholas Zhou’s Chinese Cookbook and had tweaked it a bit to suit the amount of beef strips I was using.

Ingredients:

- 1 lb beef strips (you can find them pre-cut in some supermarkets)
- 1/4 small white onion, cut into wedges (optional)
- 1 small cucumber (optional)

Marinate:

- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 1 tsp minced ginger
- 1 tsp minced garlic

Sauce:

- Satay sauce (sold in bottles in Asian supermarkets)

Method:

1. Combine all ingredients for marinate and pour over meat. Refrigerate overnight.

2. Drain off marinate. Thread each strip of meat lengthwise on a soaked bamboo skewer, weaving it in and out. Broil or grill briefly, until browned on both sides.

3. Serve with small wedges of white onion and cucumber pieces. Dip in satay sauce.

Tip:

Soak bamboo skewers in water for about 30 minutes before using. This to prevent them from burning when placed in the oven.

Do you like this recipe? Leave a comment and let me know!

Rasaku Chicken Curry Mix is a premix that has coconut cream powder, coriander, onion, sugar, chili, cumin, fennel, garlic, tumeric, cinnamon and star anise. A premix is especially useful if you are a cook who does not have a pantry stocked with spices. Besides, the shelf life of some spices is only one year, and if you had bought the above list of spices in a moment of zest to make chicken curry, and you only cook it once, then you may have to throw out the spices after a year as spices lose flavor over time.

This curry chicken recipe is idiot-proof.
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The Italians have a “prochiutto with cheese wrapped in grilled asparagus” recipe. The Asian twist to that is wrap the asparagus in bacon and grill them together!

Chinese are creative in their own way, don’t you agree?

Ingredients:

- 4 strips bacon
- 16 stalks asparagus

Method:

1. Pre-soak 16 wooden toothpicks in water for about 20-30 minutes to prevent them from burning when placed in the oven. I did not have toothpicks, so I used short wooden skewers and cut them into shorter lengths.

2. Cut each bacon strip into 4 pieces of equal length, to get a total of 16 short pieces.

3. Cut off the dry end of the asparagus and then cut them into thirds.

4. Wrap the asparagus in bacon and secure with toothpick.

5. Place the asparagus and bacon roll onto the “grilling tray” instead of just the baking sheet to allow the oil to drip from the bacon.

6. When the bacon turns golden brown and crisp, remove from the oven and place them on paper towels to soak up excess oil.

Enjoy!