Deranged/Genius Taiwanese Bar Food

In May of 2023, Double Chicken Please—a Manhattan bar started by Taiwanese-American mixologists GN Chan and Faye Chen—was named the best bar in North America. The bar’s signature cocktails, like the Mango Sticky Rice (mango rum, “sticky rice” pu’er tea, wakame, cold brew and coconut) and the Cold Pizza (blanco tequila, Parmesan cheese, burnt toast, tomato, basil, honey and egg white), are the starring attractions, but DCP’s tightly curated food menu, devised by Executive Chef Mark Chou, also delivers on the promise in their name: fantastic chicken. Specifically, they make Taiwanese fried chicken, which is served two ways: in sandwich form (very on trend) and as popcorn chicken (xián sū jī, 咸酥鸡), my personal favorite. 

Popcorn chicken has its roots in the famed night markets of Taiwan, where vendors entice passers-by with food engineered to be as fun and addictive as possible. Night market food isn’t dinner, it’s entertainment. One doesn’t fuss with napkins and bones; instead one grazes. So fried chicken becomes popcorn chicken: boneless, morsel-sized, tucked into a greasy paper bag and eaten lazily off the tip of a skewer. You can see why popcorn chicken makes a great bar snack. At Double Chicken Please, the popcorn chicken is a straight-shooting rendition dusted in white pepper and tossed with crispy basil leaves. But if you want, you can also add salted egg yolk sauce on the side! Now, this is a patently deranged idea. No double-fried chicken on earth needs to be made more decadent by being dipped in additional liquified embryonic fowl. But that’s exactly why this dish is genius.

Upon tasting the dish, I immediately loved the texture of that sauce. It was perfectly smooth, and it obediently hugged each craggy piece of chicken I swirled through it. It was salty, slightly tangy and dusted with a very fine, mild chili powder—all flavors that balanced well with the umami of the chicken. But as I was eating, I kept thinking that I wanted a stronger salted yolk flavor, including that kiss of sulfuric funk (IYKYK).

This popcorn chicken recipe is the result of that craving. It is inspired by DCP’s, but the sauce is dialed up a few notches. To do this, I pack in three whole salted yolks, and I also include coconut cream for additional aroma and depth, adding a tropical night market vibe.

A Quick Primer on Salted Egg Yolks

Salted egg yolk (xian danhuang, 咸蛋黄) refers to the yolk of a whole duck egg that has been salt-cured. This technique, which dates back to at least the 5th century, traditionally called for coating the eggs with salty clay or mud. These days, you can still buy mud-cured eggs in China, but water brines are more practical for the home cook. Over a span of about 30 days, the salt penetrates the shell, adding flavor and transforming the egg’s proteins. Uncooked salted eggs look almost gelatinous, but when hard boiled, the white of a salted egg sets firm yet silky, and the yolk takes on an oily, sandy texture. Salted duck eggs are popular across China, particularly in the paddy-rice growing regions where ducks help with weeding and pest control. (The flavor has also taken off in other parts of Asia in recent years.) In my home city of Nanjing, ducks or their eggs are eaten daily, in the humblest preparations and the most fanciful. To make your own salted duck eggs, check out my DIY Salted Duck Egg and Golden Sand Corn recipe.

A Note on Separating and Cooking the Yolks

Salted yolks need to be cooked before they can be used for sauce. There are two ways you can do this: The first option is to hard boil the eggs whole for 10 minutes and separate the yolks afterwards (reserve the whites to eat with congee!). The second is to separate the yolks from the whites with your hands or the shells while the eggs are still liquid (just like you would separate the yolks of a regular raw egg), then steam the yolks in a small bowl, set inside a steamer, for five minutes. However you do it, the yolks should be firm enough that you can mash them easily, but they should still have their deep golden hue.

Making Vegetarian “Popcorn Chicken”

I also tested this dish with chunks of chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms (laetiporus sulphureus), which, when fresh, have a meaty texture that’s uncannily similar to chicken. I could not taste the difference between the chicken and mushroom versions of this dish—the vegetarian version still offers all of the deep fried and saucy pleasures of the original, so I cannot recommend it enough. This mushroom has no substitute (please don’t use hen of the woods, which is a wholly different mushroom), but if you are lucky enough to find “chickens” in season, you can keep them in the freezer for months.

For more fun chicken recipes, try Kathy’s Hainan Coconut Chicken Hotpot, Taylor’s Cold Noodles ft. Shredded Chicken, and our classic Sichuan Mouthwatering Chicken.