Preparation, plus cooking: 35 min | Level: Moderate

This chicken stew recipe is an everyday version of a very typical Chinese dish, Soya Sauce Chicken. The official way of cooking this dish is not something Kitty could manage on a week day, so he created this version instead. The taste will be there, but it’s not slow-cooked chicken so the chicken won’t be as tender. Kitty would share his way of making the more traditional Soya Sauce Chicken in future posts.

The typical Soya Sauce Chicken you can find in a Chinese restaurant usually includes chicken only. Kitty’s recipe includes a bunch of vege as optional so you can follow the recipe to get a one-pot-dish dinner. Just need to cook rice on the side. Alternatively, you could make this dish with just chicken and accompany it with rice and other vege dishes. If you choose to do this, start with step 3.

The recipe may seemed a bit daunting at first (thus ranked as moderate level) because it calls for a few unique ingredients in Chinese cooking. However, once you get to know them and have them in your pantry, you can create many different dishes with these staple ingredients.

While most of the ingredients are optional, what you definitely can’t do without is the soya sauce. If you want to cook authentic Chinese dishes, Kitty recommends getting the light and dark soya sauce from an Asian market. Start with the brand “Kim Lan” if you don’t want to think about it, or ask the staff for recommendations.  The soya sauce makes or breaks this dish so you would want to buy the right soya sauce.

List of ingredients for easy copy and pasting:

• 5 chicken legs
• 2 potatoes (optional)
• 2 carrots (optional)
• 1 onion (optional)
• 2 green onions (optional)
• 1/2″ fresh ginger root (optional)

For sauces:

• 2 Tbsp dark soya sauce
• 2 Tbsp light soya sauce
• 1/2″ Chinese brown sugar; or 1 Tbsp if use regular sugar
• 2 Tbsp Chinese cooking rice wine (optional)
• 1 star anise (optional)
• 10 Szechuan peppercorns (optional)
• 1 Tbsp corn starch (optional)