Can'tStopCooking
Assistant Cook
I ate this delicious dish a lot when I lived in China. Somehow I left without ever getting the recipe. Neither of my Chinese cookbooks have one, and I have not been able to find a decent recipe on the web. Working with the one recipe available online (in which the proportions are way off) and my own knowledge of Chinese cooking, I came up with the following. I noticed several requests for a recipe for Yu Xiang Ji Si, so I wanted to post it. I went ahead and wrote in great detail for those uninitiated to Chinese cooking.
Yu Xiang Ji Si means literally "Fish Fragrance Chicken Slivers", but don't worry if that doesn't sound tasty - there's not a trace of fish flavor in it. It is so named, they say, because the same flavorings are used to cook fish. This dish can also be made with pork slivers, in which case it is called Yu Xiang Rou Si (rou means meat). If you want to make it with pork, I would add a tablespoon of soy sauce to the sauce mix. You wouldn't want to add the soy sauce to the chicken dish because it would ruin the color, and color is a huge part of this dish, as well as uniformity of the sliver sizes.
BTW, if you order this dish in American Chinese restaurants (which I can't bear to do because the food is sooooo different than in China), it's called Chicken in Garlic sauce. In China it can be made with garlic, but often isn't. And no way is it as sweet as they make it in America, or as saucy.
Hope this helps somebody!
Yu Xiang Ji Si
This famous Sichuan dish is cooked in the typical stir-fry way: much time is spent on the laborious chopping and pre-frying. The final cooking time is only about a minute of mad tossing at high heat mixing all the prepped food together with the sauce.
Ingredients (serves 4-6)
1. Soak the wood ears if you haven’t already.
2. As you slice the chicken breasts into slivers, chill a bowl in the freezer. To cut chicken: (Works easiest with half-thawed breasts, but you can do them raw.) First cut into slices 1/16” wide. Then lay 2 or 3 slices on top of each other and sliver into 1/16” strips. Cut in half so approximately 1” long.
3. Put chicken slivers in chilled bowl. Thoroughly stir in 1 tablespoon of sherry and ½ teaspoon salt. Then thoroughly stir in the tablespoon of cornstarch. Lastly, thoroughly stir in 1 tablespoon of oil. This is preparing what is called slippery coating. It makes the chicken a very soft texture. Place in refrigerator while you do the rest of the slicing and pre-frying.
4. With scissors, snip the dried hot peppers into ¼” ringlets. When all are snipped, remove the pepper ringlets from the bowl you snipped them into and discard the seeds which have fallen out.
5. Mix the following together in a bowl to make the sauce that will be added to the final fry up: Hot bean paste, Chinkiang vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sherry, 1 teaspoon sugar or Splenda.
6. Place all ingredients close to stove to grab quickly (Timing is everything in stir-frying. Overcooking ruins the dish.)
7. Stir-fry carrots in 1-2 Tbsp oil over medium heat until almost tender (this will take a few minutes,) remove.
8. Stir-fry green peppers in 1 Tbsp oil over high heat for 6-10 seconds – just until their color brightens; remove.
9. Stir-fry wood ear slivers in 1-2 Tbsp oil for 1 minute, remove. (You can put these three vegetables on the same dinner plate as you remove them for speedy re-entry to the almost completed dish at the end, but don’t put them on top of each other. Protect the green pepper from being further cooked by another hot veggie on top of it.)
10. Fry dried chilis until they start to darken (you’ll want the exhaust fan on and the windows open if you have more than three!); remove.
Hint: The above steps can be done in advance. The final cooking takes less than five minutes and should be done just before serving.
11. Add scallion and ginger to the now spicy hot oil and fry 5-10 seconds, then add chicken slivers. Toss without stopping. The cornstarch will stick to the bottom of the frying pan. Don’t worry about it for now. When the slivers change color and are almost all white, add the sauce, stir fry for 30 seconds to mix, then add the sesame oil and dump in the green pepper, carrots, shredded wood ears. Toss until all are coated with the sauce, another 30 seconds AT MOST, using your spatula to scrap off what’s stuck to the pan to include in the sauce. Remove immediately to a prepared serving platter and sprinkle the top with the fried dried chili pepper rings.
Voila! You are a Chinese cook!
Yu Xiang Ji Si means literally "Fish Fragrance Chicken Slivers", but don't worry if that doesn't sound tasty - there's not a trace of fish flavor in it. It is so named, they say, because the same flavorings are used to cook fish. This dish can also be made with pork slivers, in which case it is called Yu Xiang Rou Si (rou means meat). If you want to make it with pork, I would add a tablespoon of soy sauce to the sauce mix. You wouldn't want to add the soy sauce to the chicken dish because it would ruin the color, and color is a huge part of this dish, as well as uniformity of the sliver sizes.
BTW, if you order this dish in American Chinese restaurants (which I can't bear to do because the food is sooooo different than in China), it's called Chicken in Garlic sauce. In China it can be made with garlic, but often isn't. And no way is it as sweet as they make it in America, or as saucy.
Hope this helps somebody!
Yu Xiang Ji Si
This famous Sichuan dish is cooked in the typical stir-fry way: much time is spent on the laborious chopping and pre-frying. The final cooking time is only about a minute of mad tossing at high heat mixing all the prepped food together with the sauce.
Ingredients (serves 4-6)
- 8 g dried wood ears (black fungus), maybe 5 wood ears. Pour boiling water over them and leave them to soak for about 1 hour, then cut into 1/16” strips.
- 250 g, 9-10 oz. (2 large or 3 small,) chicken breasts, cut into slivers 1/16” by 1” (see below)
- 1 carrot, 100-125 g or 4 oz, cut into matchstick slivers same size as chicken slivers (hint: use half a huge carrot that is uniform in size for easy slicing)
- 1 medium sized green pepper, quartered then sliced into same size slivers
- 3-8 dried red chilies depending on their size, degree of heat, and your taste
- 2 scallions, chopped fine
- 1 Tbsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
- 2 Tbsp Chinese cooking sherry or equivalent
- 1½ tsp salt
- 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 Tbsp corn starch
- 2 tsp hot bean paste
- 1 tsp sugar or Splenda
- 1 Tbsp Chinkiang vinegar
- ½ tsp sesame oil
- vegetable oil for frying
1. Soak the wood ears if you haven’t already.
2. As you slice the chicken breasts into slivers, chill a bowl in the freezer. To cut chicken: (Works easiest with half-thawed breasts, but you can do them raw.) First cut into slices 1/16” wide. Then lay 2 or 3 slices on top of each other and sliver into 1/16” strips. Cut in half so approximately 1” long.
3. Put chicken slivers in chilled bowl. Thoroughly stir in 1 tablespoon of sherry and ½ teaspoon salt. Then thoroughly stir in the tablespoon of cornstarch. Lastly, thoroughly stir in 1 tablespoon of oil. This is preparing what is called slippery coating. It makes the chicken a very soft texture. Place in refrigerator while you do the rest of the slicing and pre-frying.
4. With scissors, snip the dried hot peppers into ¼” ringlets. When all are snipped, remove the pepper ringlets from the bowl you snipped them into and discard the seeds which have fallen out.
5. Mix the following together in a bowl to make the sauce that will be added to the final fry up: Hot bean paste, Chinkiang vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sherry, 1 teaspoon sugar or Splenda.
6. Place all ingredients close to stove to grab quickly (Timing is everything in stir-frying. Overcooking ruins the dish.)
7. Stir-fry carrots in 1-2 Tbsp oil over medium heat until almost tender (this will take a few minutes,) remove.
8. Stir-fry green peppers in 1 Tbsp oil over high heat for 6-10 seconds – just until their color brightens; remove.
9. Stir-fry wood ear slivers in 1-2 Tbsp oil for 1 minute, remove. (You can put these three vegetables on the same dinner plate as you remove them for speedy re-entry to the almost completed dish at the end, but don’t put them on top of each other. Protect the green pepper from being further cooked by another hot veggie on top of it.)
10. Fry dried chilis until they start to darken (you’ll want the exhaust fan on and the windows open if you have more than three!); remove.
Hint: The above steps can be done in advance. The final cooking takes less than five minutes and should be done just before serving.
11. Add scallion and ginger to the now spicy hot oil and fry 5-10 seconds, then add chicken slivers. Toss without stopping. The cornstarch will stick to the bottom of the frying pan. Don’t worry about it for now. When the slivers change color and are almost all white, add the sauce, stir fry for 30 seconds to mix, then add the sesame oil and dump in the green pepper, carrots, shredded wood ears. Toss until all are coated with the sauce, another 30 seconds AT MOST, using your spatula to scrap off what’s stuck to the pan to include in the sauce. Remove immediately to a prepared serving platter and sprinkle the top with the fried dried chili pepper rings.
Voila! You are a Chinese cook!
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I can wrap them in bamboo leaves but my pyramid comes out smaller than the ones that are sold in Chinese delis. I wonder how they wrap them like that? 
