Recipe for Sweet Chilly Garlic Chicken

Follow these steps to make the batter for the chicken

• In a bowl, add all the ingredients mentioned under the “chicken fry” section, except the chicken and oil
  
• Whisk it all together to form a thick batter

  Note: the batter should not be too thin and runny 
  
• Wash the chicken and cut it into cubes of around 1 inch size each
  
• Transfer the chicken into the batter and mix well
  
• Keep this aside for about 30minutes
  
• In the mean while, chop all the other ingredients  and keep it ready as shown in the pic
  
• Make the slurry and keep aside

  In a small bowl, take 1 tbspn water and 2 tbspn corn flour and mix well. This is known as slurry 
  
• Once everything is chopped and kept ready, we go ahead and fry the chicken that was kept to marinate. Take a skillet and add some oil in it for deep frying and place it on medium high flame
  
• Once the oil is hot, dip each chicken cube into the hot oil and let it fry for about 6-7 minutes
  
• Then drain out any excess oil and transfer the fried chicken on a kitchen paper towel
  
• Follow steps 8 & 9 to Fry all the chicken

  Note: when one batch of chicken is removed from the oil, don’t immediately put the next batch. Wait for at least 2 minutes till the oil turns hot again. If you put the next batch immediately, the batter will not hold onto the chicken and that is because maximum heat has been used up for frying the first batch and the oil tends to lose maximum heat. So we need to give it time to reach the desired heat for deep frying.. this applies for deep frying any food item.

Follow these steps to make the Sweet Chilly Garlic Chicken

• In a Wok, add 2 tbspn oil and place it on high flame

  Note:

  Chinese food tastes best when cooked on High flame. It should have a burnt flavour 
  
• Once the oil turns hot, add in the chopped garlic, ginger and slit green chillies into the oil and start tossing and mixing 

  Note:

  I use chopped garlic and ginger and Not paste, because I have tried both and I personally feel the flavours are enhanced when we use chopped garlic and ginger. 

  You can either use a knife to chop or a garlic crusher works fine as well
  
• After about 2-3 minutes of tossing, add the onions and capsicum and toss for another 2-3 minutes

  Note:

  The onion and capsicum should not get fully cooked. When there’s a crunch, it always tastes better
  
• After 2-3 minutes, add in all your sauces, salt, honey, ajinomoto, spring onion and the fried chicken 

  Note:

  The quantities that I’ve mentioned are just to give you a base and an idea. You can add more or less as per your taste. Whenever I cook Chinese, I can never maintain an exact quantity of salt and sauces
  
• Keep tossing and mixing 
  
• Add in the fried chicken and mix and toss
  
•  Pour in the slurry little by little with one hand and keep mixing and tossing with the other. We follow this process so that there are no lumps formed
  
• Once all the chicken is coated with the sauces, you can turn off the flame 
  

Notes:

• Your gas flame has to be extremely high throughout the process
• You have to keep mixing and tossing. At no stage can you leave the ingredients to cook unattended
• You can also make a gravy if you don’t like it dry. All you have to do is, increase the quantity of sauces, salt, ajino, honey and corn flour slurry and towards the end, add in 2 cups of chicken stock or water. Once it starts boiling, pour in the slurry little by little and keep stirring so that no lumps are formed 
• You can also substitute chicken with Prawns. The process  and ingredients remain the same
• The best way to enjoy this Beautiful Flavour-packed dish is to have it as soon as you turn off your gas flame i.e. piping hot!! It goes well with Fried Rice, Burnt Chilly Rice and Hakka Noodles or you can simply enjoy it as a starter as well! 

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