The Sinosphere · Volume 33, The Mala Basin
Laziji (辣子鸡), Chongqing "chicken amid chillies"
Gele Mountain, Chongqing
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour
- Researched
- Researched from 96 sources in the brief
Origin is genuinely disputed even within Chinese sources: most commonly placed at Gele Mountain in the 1980s, one account naming a stallholder surnamed Lin, another crediting a chef named Zhu Tiancai and dating it to 1984, with at least four provinces reported disputing the true birthplace. It belongs to Chongqing's jianghu cai, "rivers and lakes cuisine", a documented category of bold, unmeasured, working-class-originated cooking that first appeared as a restaurant-sign term in 1992, deliberately opposed to the more measured conventions of classical Sichuan banquet cooking, which some traditionalist chefs of the time dismissed as reckless.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 as part of a shared meal. About 1 hour.
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, or chicken thigh, cut into small chunks
- to taste salt, cooking wine and black pepper, for marinating
- 50 to 80g dried chillies
- 10 to 15g Sichuan pepper
- 1 piece ginger, 3 cloves garlic ginger and garlic
- a little spring onion, sugar and toasted sesame seeds
Method
- Marinate the chicken chunks 20 to 30 minutes in the salt, cooking wine and black pepper, then deep-fry at roughly 80 percent oil heat until dry and deep golden.
- Separately fry the ginger and garlic at about 70 percent oil heat until fragrant, then add the dried chillies and Sichuan pepper at roughly a 4:1 ratio by weight, and stir until aromatic and the oil colours.
- Return the fried chicken to the pan and toss with the spring onion, sugar and toasted sesame seeds.
Notes
The finished dish should bury the chicken pieces in chilli, so thoroughly that diners hunt for the meat rather than the other way round, the genuine visual and flavour signature of the dish done properly.
What a modern chef changes
A brined, double-fried chicken and pre-dried chillies
Rung 1
Method
- Brine the chicken pieces briefly, thirty minutes in a 5 percent salt solution, before marinating, for a juicier interior that survives the hard fry.
- Double-fry the chicken, an initial fry at 150°C to cook through, rested, then a second flash at 190°C for extra crispness, the same staged-heat logic as the aubergine elevation.
- Toast the dried chillies and Sichuan pepper in the dehydrator at 60°C for fifteen minutes before frying, drying them further so they colour the oil faster and more evenly without scorching, a direct application of Rung 1's staged-temperature thinking to a dry-toss dish rather than a wet chilli oil.