This Sizzling Weeknight Dish Combines Classic Cantonese Flavors With Clay Pot Cooking

I visited Guangzhou in the winter of 2019 with my mom, and one of my most memorable meals from that trip was a dinner I had at a Cantonese restaurant called Hui Shi Jia (惠食佳). A few things helped this meal stick in my head: For one, we waited a record-breaking (for me) two and a half hours. For another, the restaurant’s iconic sizzling clay pot dishes, known as juéjué bāo (啫啫煲), were worth every minute.

My mom and I ordered clay pots with swamp eel and gai lan, along with the classic clay pot rice with cured meats. These were a feast for the senses—served sizzling hot, filling the air with a charred aroma and a satisfying crackle. The vegetables were bright green, the meat tender, and the rice crispy—and all perfectly seasoned. Hui Shi Jia is a local favorite for juejue bao in Guangzhou, and the restaurant takes it seriously, producing their own custom clay cooking pots and carefully timing the journey from kitchen to table to ensure the dish continues cooking as it reaches the diner.

I’ve been thinking about this style of cooking ever since I had that meal, but only recently did I attempt to do it myself, after purchasing a high-quality clay pot. To start off, I decided to use this technique to make a twist on another Cantonese classic: chicken with black bean sauce (dòuchǐ jī, 豆豉鸡). The result offered the flavor of a traditional chicken and black bean sauce combination but each ingredient was slightly concentrated—and the pot gave the whole thing a nice sizzle.

The History of Juejue Bao Dishes

Juejue bao is a technique rather than any one single dish. Originally pronounced zhě in Mandarin (for 啫, a character that relates to the sizzling sound the dish makes) and pronounced jué in Cantonese, jue jue refers to a cooking method where fresh ingredients are quickly seared in a preheated clay pot, without adding water or broth. Clay pots retain heat exceptionally well, and when the ingredients hit the scorching surface, they sear instantly. This locks in the food’s moisture, creating tender, juicy bites with a slightly crisp exterior. The high heat also intensifies the aroma of the sauces and aromatics, allowing the Shaoxing wine added to these dishes to evaporate and infuse the other ingredients with its deep fragrance.

The method for cooking juejue bao is believed to have originated in dai pai dongs, 大排档 (affordable food stalls), in Guangdong. While the technique itself isn’t new, it’s a modern take on a classic Cantonese method called 煀 (qū), in which ingredients are steamed in a covered vessel to enhance their aroma.

According to The Cantonese Chef’s Classic (《粤厨宝典》), chef Liang Meng (梁孟) created the first juejue chicken in the 1940s. During an especially cold winter, he experimented by preheating the clay pot even longer than he did for his usual clay pot chicken (煀鸡, qū jī) and adding more oil to keep the food warm for diners. The loud sizzling sound inspired the dish’s name, and it quickly became a Guangzhou favorite. Some records also refer to it as zhāzhā jī (喳喳鸡).

Because juejuebao is a relatively new technique, there is no standard flavoring combination. Every cook has their own secret recipe for the sauce, but it often consists of soy sauce and oyster sauce, and some include chuhou paste, hoisin sauce, fermented tofu, ground bean sauce (which tastes similar to douchi) and/or peanut butter. For my version, I kept it simple—and true to the usual douchi ji format—with soy sauce, oyster sauce and the umami-rich douchi.

Recreating Chicken With Black Bean Sauce at Home

For this dish, I used the juejue technique to make a version of traditional chicken with black bean sauce (douchi ji), drawing inspiration from my experiences in Guangzhou and the description of a Hong Kong restaurant’s method. In doing my research, I also learned that I wasn’t the first to think of making chicken with black bean sauce in a clay pot. It turns out that renowned Hong Kong food writer Chan Monyan already wrote about it back in the 1950s: 

In the book Food Classics (《食经》), he describes the meticulous method Hong Kong’s Tai Yuen Restaurant (大元酒家) uses to make their famous douchi ji: Garlic and shiso leaves are pounded into a paste, fried until fragrant and mixed with douchi before being steamed until soft. The chicken is marinated with water chestnut starch and velveted in hot oil. Then, it’s cooked in a hot clay pot with Shaoxing wine and the garlic mixture, covered and steamed for three minutes. Finally, a small amount of stock is poured along the lid’s edge to keep the chicken moist. 

I streamlined this process to create a quick, accessible home version. While I can’t replicate the intense heat of restaurant burners, I use boneless chicken thighs, cut into smaller pieces, to ensure they cook quickly. For best results, use a powerful gas stove and a robust clay pot. However, this dish can also be made in other heat-retentive cookware, such as a small cast-iron pot, deep cast-iron skillet, or even a wok with a lid (like The Mala Market’s cast-iron wok). Make sure they’re well seasoned so the ingredients don’t stick to the bottom. Before adding the aromatics and pepper, try arranging the shallots and ginger at the bottom of the pot with the chicken on top—this helps prevent the chicken from scorching over high heat during the rest of the cooking process. However, if you’re really worried about scorching the chicken, you can treat this as a normal stir-fry and just extend the stir-frying and steaming time until the chicken is cooked.

The final flavoring added to this dish is a dash of Shaoxing wine. How you add this will depend on the type of pot you are using:

• For clay pots, pour the Shaoxing wine over the lid so it slowly drips around the edges and into the dish, enhancing the aroma.
• For woks or other pots, add the wine directly to the pan’s edges so it evaporates quickly, then cover immediately to trap the steam. 

While the douchi used in this dish is often translated as “black beans” on American menus, due to its appearance, it’s actually made by fermenting and salting soybeans—yellow soybeans for the Sichuan variety and black soybeans (a variety of soybeans with black skin, locally produced in Yanjiang) for the Guangdong variety. They can be used interchangeably. As one of the oldest condiments in Chinese cuisine, douchi has long been used to enhance dishes with deep savory and umami flavors. It is especially common in southern Chinese cooking and appears in dishes like Cantonese steamed ribs (豉汁排骨). Since salt levels can vary by brand and region, I usually taste one or two beans first and adjust the amount of salt and soy sauce accordingly.

For more flavorful chicken dishes, check out Xueci’s Sichuan Stir-Fried Chicken With Yacai (Jimi Yacai, 鸡米芽菜), Zoe’s Popcorn Chicken With Salted Egg Yolk Sauce (Xian Su Ji, 咸酥鸡) and Kathy’s Sichuan Braised Chicken With Chestnut + Shiitake (Banli Shaoji, 板栗烧鸡).