Sichuan Braised Chicken with Chestnut + Shiitake (Banli Shaoji, 板栗烧鸡)
The Mala MarketIngredients
- 6-8 dried shiitake mushrooms
- 2 pounds free-range bone-in skin-on chicken legs
- ½ tablespoon Chinese rapeseed oil (caiziyou preferred) enough to coat pan bottom
- 1 heaping tablespoon Pixian doubanjiang (spicy broad bean paste)
- 1 thumb fresh skin-on ginger, smashed
- ½ teaspoon whole huajiao (Sichuan pepper)
- 1 teaspoon Chinese light soy sauce (Zhongba preferred)
- ½ teaspoon Chinese dark soy sauce (Zhongba preferred)
- 1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine
- 1 star anise
- 1 bay leaf
- 4 dried Sichuan chilis (gan lajiao, we used chaotianjiao)
- ½ cup reserved mushroom soaking water add more to cover sliced mushrooms as needed
- 285 grams cooked and peeled chestnuts approx. 10 ounces
Instructions
Prep
- Rinse dried mushrooms in cold water and then soak in warm (not so hot you can't touch it) water for 20 minutes. Strain, squeezing extra water from mushrooms and reserving soaking liquid. Slice.
- While mushrooms soak, chop chicken legs through the bone into chopstickable sections (not as small as bite-size, one drumstick gets divided into three pieces for scale). Do NOT debone. Leaving each section bone-in ensures tender, juicy and more evenly braised chicken.
Braise
- Preheat your dutch oven on medium heat, adding enough oil to coat bottom. We used a 2-quart oven.
- In hot dutch oven, add douban, smashed ginger and huajiao. Stirfry 30 seconds. Turn heat to medium high and add chopped chicken, stirfrying until browned on all sides. Add sliced mushroom and stirfry briefly to mix.
- Add cooked chestnuts, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, star anise, bay leaf, dry chilis and reserved mushroom soaking liquid. Stir well. The chicken does not need to be covered, but make sure any mushroom slices and chestnuts are immersed. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on low for 15 minutes. Stir and replace cover halfway through.
- After 15 minutes, check that chicken is cooked through and adjust for flavor and doneness as desired.
Notes
If you plan ahead, overnight (or all day) cold-soaked mushrooms provide the best texture and flavor for dried mushrooms. Rinse and soak in the morning and they'll be ready for use by dinnertime. Hot water will reconstitute dried mushrooms faster at the expense of flavor, so we never do this for top-grade shiitake. Fresh and dried shiitake are not substitutable.