How to Cook Chicken Manchurian
Serves: 4
Preparation time: 10 mins
Cooking time: 15 mins
Ingredients needed to make chicken manchurian:
- 2 chicken breasts, chopped into small dices
For marinating chicken:
- 1 tsp cornflour
- 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
For the sauce:
- 1 cup chicken stock
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp chili-garlic sauce
- ¼ tsp Tabasco sauce
- ¼ cup tomato ketchup
- 1 tsp garlic, finely chopped
- 1 tsp fresh ginger root, finely chopped
- 1 green chili, finely chopped
- 2 tbsp water
- 2 tbsp cornflour
- 1 tsp sugar
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp msg (optional)
- 1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- Chopped scallions, for garnishing
Cooking instructions for chicken manchurian:
- Add the ingredients of the marinade in a bowl and stir them well together until they are evenly distributed throughout the mixture.
- Drop the chunks of chicken into the bowl and toss well until they are properly coated with the marinade; set aside.
- Drizzle oil in a wok and heat over moderate flame until it becomes but doesn’t smoke.
- Throw in the garlic and saute it for a minute or until it becomes fragrant.
- Add the garlic and continue to stir-fry the mixture for another minute.
- Shake off any excess marinade in the chicken and add to the sauteed mixture.
- Cook them for about 5-8 minutes, stirring them often and transfer the chicken to a bowl; try to retain the ginger-garlic in the wok as much as possible.
- Add a splash of chicken stock into the wok and season with a dash of msg, salt as well as lots of black pepper (if you want it fiery).
- Whisk the Tabasco sauce into the ketchup and pour the mixture into the simmering chicken stock.
- Slit a green chili halfway from the middle longitudinally and drop it into the sauce; stir them all together to mix.
- Return the chicken to the sauce and simmer it for about 5 minutes.
- Dissolve the cornflour in water and stir the mixture into the sauce before cooking it for another couple of minutes or until the sauce thickens considerably.
- You can stir in small amount of red food coloring to make it more pleasing to the eyes, but that’s completely a matter of choice.
- Pour the manchurian chicken into a serving bowl and top it up with chopped scallions.
- Serve warm with stir-fried noodles or rice.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
