Kung Pao Chicken

Recipe from Lawrence C.C. Chu

As the story goes¹, the chef of a provincial viceroy, a kung pao, made a mistake while cooking dinner: He overbrowned the chilli in the hot oil before adding the chicken; however, in so doing, he created an aroma that was spicy and smoky. To his good fortune, his viceroy loved it, and both the dish and the story became widespread. The number of dried chilli pods in this recipe indicates that this dish is fiery hot.

Yields:

8 servings

Time Required:

• 15 mins. cooking time

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken breast, split, boned, and skinned

Marinade

• 2 tsp.² (10 mL) soy sauce
• 2 tsp. (10 mL) dry sherry
• 1 tsp. (2.7 g) corn starch (US/Canada), aka cornflour (UK/other)³
• 1 Tbsp. (15 mL) vegetable oil

• Vegetable oil, for blanching

Seasonings

• 3 Tbsp. (45 mL) soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp. (15 mL) dry sherry
• 2 Tbsp. (30 mL) red rice vinegar
• 1 tsp. (4 g) sugar
• ½ tsp. (2.5 mL) cornstarch paste⁴
• 10 dried red chilli pods

Vegetables

• 6-8 water chestnuts, cut in fourths
• ¼ cup (33 g) diced bamboo shoots
• 2 green onions (white part), cut in ½" (13 mm) pieces
• 1 clove garlic, minced or pressed⁵

• ¼ tsp. (1.25 mL) sesame oil
• 1 tsp. (5 mL) hot chilli oil
• ¼ cup (37 g) roasted peanuts

Preparation:

Bone chicken, remove skin and cut meat into ¼" (6 mm) cubes. Combine with MARINADE ingredients in the order listed; set aside.

To oil-blanch, set wok over high heat for about 1 min. Add 2 cups oil and heat to 300°F (150°C). Add chicken, stirring to separate pieces. Remove and drain.

Combine SEASONINGS thoroughly; set aside.

To stir-fry, remove all but 2 Tbsp. (30 mL) oil from wok. Reheat, swirling pan to coat sides. Add chilli pods, breaking only one in half. Stir for about 45 secs. or until browned (but not burned). Return chicken and cook for 1 to 2 mins. until browned. Add VEGETABLES, stir-frying for 1 min. Add SEASONINGS, mixing thoroughly, and cook until thickened. Sprinkle with sesame and hot chilli oils, and finally with roasted peanuts to serve.

Author's Notes

Chili seeds, not pods, determine just how hot a dish will be. I suggest breaking open only one, the first time; if you want it hotter, open more, next time.

Try a delicious variation using squid instead of chicken. It's listed as Hunan Lichee Squid (below).

Hunan Lichee Squid

Fresh squid might make this delicious dish more accessible, but the Chinese love the crunchy texture of dehydrated squid, which is reconstituted for cooking. The taste is different, but you may become a convert.

Yields:

6-8 servings

Time Required:

• 5 mins. cooking time

Ingredients:

• 1 package (8 oz., 227 g) dehydrated squid
• About 1 quart (0.9 L) water
• 1 Tbsp. (17 g) baking soda

• 1 tsp. (5 mL) white vinegar

Sauce

• 1 Tbsp. (15 mL) dry sherry
• 2 tsp. (10 mL) white vinegar
• 1 tsp. (4 g) sugar
• 1 ½ tsp. (2.5 mL) cornstarch paste
• ½ tsp. (3 g) salt
• 1 tsp. (5 mL) sesame oil
• 1 tsp. (5 mL) hot chilli oil (optional)

• 5 Tbsp. (75 mL) vegetable oil
• Pinch salt

• 2 green onions (white part), sliced ½"thick
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• 2 thumb-sized pieces fresh ginger, cut in half

Preparation:

Remove squid eyes, and discard/remove tentacles. (Save for other uses, if desired.) Combine water and baking soda. Add squid, and let stand for 24 hours. Drain, discarding water.

Put squid into a large pot, cover with water, and let soak for 30 mins. Repeat this procedure 5 times, for a total of 2 ½ hours. Remove. (This procedure may be done in advance.)

Remove cartilage and membrane from squid. Cut in half lengthwise. Score by cutting criss-cross incisions in a diamond pattern. Cut into three sections (1f large) or in half.

To water-blanch, cook squid in 2 quarts (1.9 L) boiling water mixed with vinegar for 1 min., or until it curls. Remove and drain.

Combine SAUCE ingredients. Set aside.

To stir-fry, heat wok (or wide frying pan) over high heat for 1 min. until hot. Add 2 Tbsp. (30 mL) oil and salt, and swirl to coat sides. Add squid, and stir-fry for 30 secs. Remove and drain; wipe wok clean. Add remaining 3 Tbsp. (45 mL) oil, and, when hot, add green onions, garlic, and ginger. Stir until fragrant. Add squid to reheat (about 10 secs.), and then sauce. When mixture thickens, remove and serve immediately.

Author's Notes:

Some cooks like to save the tentacles. You can boil them or deep-fry them, and serve with a dipping sauce as appetizer.

Substitute Oyster Sauce for the sauce in this recipe, if you want a delicious variation. (Many good prepared oyster sauces are available in cans or jars, from East Asian markets and some supermarkets.)

(RM note: Oyster sauce is made from mixing oyster extracts, sugar, salt, water, and corn starch, sometimes darkened with caramel, heated and bottled. I would advise being careful to pick a quality sauce, owing to risk of dangerous contaminants.

¹ That's indeed one version of the story, but there are more likely ones, involving a direct creative role by late Qing Dynasty official Ding Baozhen.

² Quarts, pints, cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, and fl. oz. are as defined in US Customary Units, not to be confused with differing British imperial, "legal", "coffee", Commonwealth of Nations, Canadian, Latin American, Japanese, Russian, or Dutch definitions — further proof that everyone needs the metric system.

³ "Corn starch" is powdered starch processed from the New World grain maize (from Spanish, orig. from Nahuatl), which grain the USA/Canada call "corn", unlike the rest of the English-speaking world, which reserves "corn" to mean cereal grains generically. This starch product, needed here in its customary role as a thickening agent, is called "corn starch" in the US/Canada, but "cornflour" in the UK and most other anglophone lands — not to be confused with whole maize grain: That product — not a thickening agent — is called "polenta", "corn meal", or "corn flour" in the US/Canada, depending on how finely milled, and called "maize flour" in the UK and most other places. Australians should beware that their "cornflour" is starch extracted from wheat kernel, sometimes more-helpfully labelled as "wheaten cornflour". As if that weren't confusing enough, the maize-based thickener may be labelled (in Australia) either as "corn flour" or as "corn starch", so beware. Further, the maize flour product, there, is labelled as "cornmeal".

Note that whole-maize grain is traditionally, in Meso-American cultures of origin, wisely soaked in alkaline solution ("nixtamalised") to increase bioavailability and thereby prevent niacin deficiency (pellagra), among other important benefits, yielding "masa" (lit. dough) aka "masa de maíz" (lit. maize dough), also available in dried & ground form as "masa harina" (lit. dough flour) aka "harina de maíz" (lit. maize flour), and in its unground form, hominy. As further complication, Americans distinguish "corn flour", meaning prepared from maize endosperm only, from "maize flour" for use of whole maize — the former, neutral-flavoured; the latter, much more nutritious.

Origin of the naming mess: Originally, North America shared with Mother England the language's original meaning of "corn" to mean cereal grains generically (from Old English "corn" meaning single seed of any cereal plant, orig. from Proto-Germanic "kurnam" meaning small seed). The colonists got the gift of maize from native peoples, therefore at first calling it "Indian corn". Later, in the USA and Canada, "Indian corn" got worn down to just "corn", while the original meaning of "corn" was lost, locally. "Maize" is thus now the least-ambiguous term in international contexts, though many Americans either don't know that word or reserve it for variants from Latin-American (and Spanish) cooking.

⁴ Cornstarch paste is a thin paste made from equal parts of cold water and corn starch. It is essential in many Chinese dishes (but be careful not to over-thicken). Stir just before using. Store covered in the refrigerator for 1 or 2 days.

⁵ Minced is better. Crushing vegetables breaks all of the constituent cellulose-rich cells' walls and has unfortunate consequences to the food's tastes, particularly in the case of garlic, the crushed paste of which easily becomes bitter, lacking flavour nuance, and sometimes picking up a metallic aftertaste.

So, think of this as your motivation to get a nice, really sharp 8" (20 cm) chef's knife for mincing (producing ¹⁄₁₆" = 1.5 mm cuts), and a good cutting board.

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Taken from: Lawrence C.C. Chu's classic cookbook Chef Chu's Distinctive Cuisine Of China, page 77, published 1980 by Harper and Row, which can be checked out in scanned format at Internet Archive. Thank you! (Chu's the chef / restaurateur of beloved local restaurant Chef Chu's, in Los Altos, California.)

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/kung-pao-chicken.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Oct. 4, 2026. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2026 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)