Mala Dry Pot Chicken (Ganguoji 干锅鸡/Mala Xiangguo 麻辣香锅)

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dry pot chicken (mala xiang guo) by The Mala Market

Chengdu Challenge #21:  Dry Pot, My New Favorite Meal

“This is my new favorite restaurant!” my friend Carla used to proclaim almost every time we ate somewhere new in New York. That could be construed as fickle, but really it was just enthusiasm. I feel the same sometimes about these dishes—every one I cook is my new favorite. But this one, particularly, truly, is my new favorite recipe and is likely to stay that way for a while.

Why? Because it’s more a method than a recipe, and because it’s easily and infinitely adaptable to any ingredients you like and happen to have on hand. Because it’s pretty hard to mess it up. And because it tastes so much like Sichuan.

Dry pot (干锅, gānguō or 麻辣香锅, málà xiāngguō) is exactly what it sounds like—the dry version of hotpot. It takes the flavorings and ingredients of mala Sichuan hotpot and subtracts the oily broth, so all that’s left is your meats, your veggies, your spices and just enough sauce to moisten it all. It’s always served in a wok of some type, and sometimes the wok sits over a flame, which is visually fun but not at all necessary. (I serve mine in the handmade shallow wok I bought on the street in Istanbul—with Carla, come to think of it. Yes, Turkey uses woks!)

Dry pot is not quite as communal as hotpot, because you’re not cooking the food yourself at table, but it almost is, because everyone is dipping into the communal wok to pluck  out their tasty bites from an array of surprises. Or at least they are if you eat it the Chinese way.

I’ve only had dry pot a few times in Chengdu, but they were highly memorable, so I kind of obsessed over it when I spent the summer close to the San Gabriel Valley, trying it at every Sichuan restaurant and also at Happy Tasty, a Wuhan restaurant (the capital of Sichuan’s neighbor Hubei Province) that specializes in dry pot. All the spicy provinces in China, as well as Beijing, seem to love it.

So before I get started with my adaptation, here are a few of the dry pots I’ve known:

mala dry pot ganguo
Dry pot with bite-size pork ribs, shrimp and crispy rice. This resto in Chengdu set the massive shallow wok into a specially made table for everyone to share. (Notice how dry it is.)
dry pot ganguo in chengdu
At a food hall in Chengdu, we picked our own ingredients from those on display for the dry pot. This was mostly vegetables and tofu skin with quail eggs. (The small bowls are drinks.)
dry pot ganguo
At Happy Tasty, a Wuhan restaurant in Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley, you choose the proteins; we chose fish fillets and bullfrog
dry pot ganguo
This dry pot at the SGV’s Szechuan Impression featured spiky-cut squid, lotus root and fresh bamboo shoots.

As you can see, the ingredients can be just about any combo you like, and really any spice mix and heat level you like too. I like the standard Sichuan flavorings of Pixian chili bean paste, chili flakes and Sichuan pepper, plus fennel seed and cumin. While more traditional Sichuan dishes don’t use much cumin, this more-recently invented dish often tastes of it. Also note that, unlike hotpot, dry pot is not served with dipping sauces on the side.

preparing mala xiangguo at home
For this version I used every aromatic, including lots of hot jalapenos, plus an assortment of vegetables and pre-soaked tofu skin.

Making dry pot is an easy but multistep process. Everything but the aromatics is cooked in advance. The meats are fully cooked on their own, and the vegetables are partially cooked—either parboiled or, as restaurants often do, deep-fried. All is added and mixed together with the aromatics and seasonings in the wok at the end. Add just a splash of soy sauce and Shaoxing wine, and enough chicken broth to keep it moist, but there should be no sauce to speak of.

Parboil all the vegetables together
Parboil all the vegetables together, adding them into the pot according to the amount of time they need to cook. They should remain crisp.
Deep-fry the chicken bits until golden
Deep-fry the chicken bits until golden. (These were delicious and I didn’t make enough.)
Stir-fry the aromatics, then make a well in the center, add more oil and all the seasonings
Stir-fry the aromatics, then make a well in the center, add more oil and all the seasonings

(Cooking Chinese is often a family affair for us, and this photo proves it. Craig is manning the wok; I am adding in the ingredients; and Fongchong is photographing every step.)

drypot ganguo
Add the vegetables, chicken, scallions and toasted sesame seeds to the wok and mix well.

Crowding the work is normally a no-no, but it doesn’t matter so much with this dish if you crowd the wok a bit toward the end, since you aren’t really cooking but just mixing everything together.

So that’s the method. What ingredients will you put in your dry pot? Or should I say, your new favorite meal?

Mala Dry Pot Chicken (Ganguoji 干锅鸡/Mala Xiangguo 麻辣香锅)

By: Taylor Holliday | The Mala Market | Inspiration & Ingredients for Sichuan Cooking
Just like hotpot, dry pot is more a method than a recipe; feel free to vary the ingredients at will. Just make sure all the ingredients are thinly sliced and/or bite-sized. Quantities below make for a spicy dry pot, so adjust chili peppers and flakes to your own taste.

Ingredients 

  • 1 pound skinless chicken thighs, cut into small cubes
  • 1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 sticks dried tofu skin, broken into pieces, covered with boiling water and soaked for ½ hour
  • 1 russet potato, sliced thinly (with a mandoline is easiest)
  • 1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced thinly
  • Several stalks broccolini, cut into bite-size pieces
  • Several stalks celery, sliced thinly on the diagonal
  • 1 small onion, sliced thinly
  • 1 or 2 hot green chili peppers (to taste), jalapenos or serranos, sliced thinly
  • 4 or 5 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
  • 1 tablespoon ginger, cut into thin slivers
  • 8 to 10 dried whole red chili peppers
  • 1 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorns
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seed
  • 1 teaspoon fennel seed
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 tablespoon Sichuan ground chilies
  • 2 tablespoons Pixian doubanjiang (chili bean paste)
  • 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
  • 1 tablespoon Chinese light soy sauce (Zhongba preferred)
  • ¼ cup chicken broth (as needed)
  • 4 scallions, cut in ⅓-inch lengths
  • 1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Instructions 

  • Marinate chicken cubes in 1 tablespoon Shaoxing wine and ½ teaspoon salt while you prep the vegetables.
  • Add Sichuan pepper, cumin seeds and fennel seeds to dry skillet and toast until fragrant. Allow to cool slightly, then grind coarsely in a spice grinder or mortar & pestle. Add chili flakes and salt and mix well.
  • Heat wok on high until almost smoking. Add enough peanut or canola oil to deep-fry the chicken, and heat to about 375°F. Fry chicken until golden brown, then remove to paper-towel-lined plate and reserve.
  • Bring a large pot of water to a boil, and add vegetables: first add the potato slices for about 30 seconds, then the pre-soaked tofu skin, followed by the broccolini, celery and red bell slices. Return to a boil and cook only until the vegetables are just cooked through and still crisp, about 2 minutes. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop cooking process.
  • Clean wok and return to high heat until almost smoking. Heat 3 tablespoons oil until hot, then add onions. Stir-fry until softened, then add green chili peppers, garlic, ginger and dried red chilies. Stir-fry vigorously so that nothing browns or burns.
  • Shove aromatics to the sides of the wok and make a well in the center. Add 2 tablespoons oil and then the spice mixture. Cook briefly, then add the chili bean paste and cook briefly, until fragrant.
  • Add the parboiled vegetables to the wok and mix well with the aromatics and seasonings. Drizzle the Shaoxing wine and soy sauce around the edges of the wok. Add the chicken and the scallions and stir-fry briefly, mixing well with other ingredients.
  • If wok and ingredients get too dry at any point during the stir-fry process, add chicken broth just to moisten. When all ingredients are mixed and cooked through, plate and garnish with sesame seeds.

Tried this recipe?

 

About Taylor Holliday

The Mala Market all began when Taylor, a former journalist, created this blog as a place to document her adventures learning to cook Sichuan food for Fongchong, her recently adopted 11-year-old daughter. They discovered through the years that the secret to making food that tastes like it would in China is using the same ingredients that are used in China. The mother-daughter team eventually began visiting Sichuan’s factories and farms together and, in 2016, opened The Mala Market, America’s source for heritage Sichuan ingredients and Chinese pantry essentials.

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15 Comments

    1. Thank you! I love to hear that. It reminds me to try it with some new and different ingredients. Like hotpot, it could take almost anything.

  1. This recipe/method is amazing and totally adaptable to whatever you have on hand. Tonight I made my first one with last of the season winter bamboo shoots, gai lan, tree ears, king oyster mushrooms, japanese yellow yam and potato with vegetarian chicken. Thanks so much for publishing the recipe and for all your recipes really. I’ve cooked the Yu Xiang eggplant, the La Ji Zi, the mabo tofu and the kung pao lotus root and they were all stellar

    1. Awww. Can’t tell you how much I love to hear that.

      This is exactly what I was hoping people would do with the dry pot recipe. Sounds like you have access to perfect ingredients too.

      Thanks so much for writing!

      1. Yes I’m very lucky I live and work in the San Gabriel Valley so I can get whatever I need pretty much. OMG we can even get great organic Chinese vegetables at the Alhambra farmers market but without great cooks like you we would all be lost as to what to do with them. BTW a new market opened up and I scored some oil based doubanjiang that the clerk said was made in her hometown, some good looking whole pickled red chilies and some pickled white chilies that I have no idea what to do with but I’m researching lol

        1. Cool! My daughter and I spend the summers near the SGV, so I’d love to know name and/or address of that new market.

          About the white chilies, are they kind of light green? I’ve bought the little, Tabasco-like, light-green pickled chilies for pickled chicken feet (for my daughter) and for green-chili boiled fish.

  2. That’s awesome you should let me know when you are here. 🙂 The market is the Good Fortune Supermarket it took the place of the HK market on San Gabriel Blvd. http://www.goodfortunesupermarket.com/tmp/desktop.php
    They seem to have a nice supply of western Chinese groceries. The chilies are pretty light in color but definitely tinged green. I think they might be used in that Hunan dish of steamed fish with chilies but instead of the salted red ones (this market carries giant jars of red salted chiles) sometimes they use brined green almost white ones but I’m not sure.

    1. I know that market! At least in its previous version. I’ll definitely check it out. And I’ll try to look you up when we’re there, since we’ll be eating lunch in your hood every day. Thanks for the info!

  3. Great recipe! I tried it with bok choy and enoki mushroom. Might not need all of that salt if you’re using a stronger kosher salt, but recipe is 10/10!

    1. Awesome! Good tip about the salt. I tend to use the douban with oil, which is a bit less salty than the regular doubanjiang. You definitely have to consider the saltiness of both the douban and the salt.

  4. I just wanted to say thank you for this recipe!

    We used to live near an amazing Sichuan restaurant that made fabulous dry wok prawns. We’ve unfortunately moved away and miss the food terribly, however this recipe is so damn close to perfect. We make a few tweaks, mainly bashing the spice mix rather than grinding it so you get a bite of the peppercorn, abd we substitute the chicken for prawns.

    The only thing I haven’t quite cracked is the texture of the prawns. They have a crispness, but not a proper batter. Any suggestions would be so appreciated.

    Thanks again!

    1. I’m so happy to hear that this tastes like the dry pot you miss! I’ve not really made it with shrimp, but I feel like in Sichuan they would give the shell-on prawns a light starch dusting and quickly deep-fry them. Some restaurants tend to fry a lot of the dry pot ingredients. This is kind of a pain to do at home, but of course it tastes great. I hope you can perfect it!

  5. “My new favorite” says my girlfriend. This recipe is excellent. We added rice cakes and some roasted sweet potato with curry powder — both of which tempered the ma and drew out the la. We also used half red and half green peppercorns. It was perfect. I don’t know when I’ll bother to try to use the dry pot sauce I bought from you, because this was so good.

    1. I love this review! And I love that you made the dish your own. I’ve been working on another version of a dry pot sauce that is similar to the packaged kind, but I’m really glad to know you like this one just fine.

      I’m going to have to try the sweet potatoes and rice cakes. Sounds so good!