A Taiwanese chicken dish that is cooked in soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil, and loaded with heaps of whole garlic cloves, slices of ginger, and fresh Thai basil. There is an over-abundance of flavor which will satisfy any hunger!
Ingredients (serves 4)
Chicken Legs with cuts through bone (2-3 lbs) Ginger (4" knob cut into slices) Garlic (7-8 crushed cloves) Dried Chili peppers (4-5) Cooking Wine (1/4 cup) Soy Sauce (1/4 cup) Sesame oil (3 tbs) Basil Leaves (8-10 leaves) Sugar (pinch)
Directions
Get about 2-3 lbs of chicken legs that are already cut through the bone, or have the butcher cut it for you. Open bone means more flavor when cooked. Start by parboiling quickly just to rid of any impurities. Boil the chicken just for a minute and dump out all the water and clean off the chicken legs.
Prepare the ingredients for the sautee. Large ginger slices, around 8 pieces or so, 7-8 crushed garlic cloves, a few dried chili peppers, and 8-10 basil leaves.
If you have a large clay pot use it as this will keep the heat in better. Start by warming up a clay pot under high heat and adding a bit of oil. Once hot, add the ginger, garlic, and chili peppers and sautee a bit. After you start smelling the fresh fragrance of the ingredients, drop in the chicken to sear. Mix it all around every 20 seconds to try and sear all sides of the chicken. Make sure you have a big enough pot to do this!
Here are the ingredients for the sauce. Soy sauce on the left (Olong Premium Black Bean Sauce is a very good brand. A bit more expensive but has a bit of sweetness to the flavor), cooking wine (I use michiu) and sesame oil on the right.
Once the chicken browns up a bit from the sear, add 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup cooking wine, and about 3 tbs sesame oil to the chicken. Mix it all around again but continue with high heat. Make sure you get all sides of the chicken with the sauce when mixing.
Put the lid on and cook with a small boil for 45 minutes. You may want to turn the chicken halfway through to get all sides of the chicken in the sauce. After 45 minutes, remove the lid and the chicken should be cooked and brown. If there is still a lot of sauce on the bottom that hasn't condensed yet, continue to cook without the lid to condense the sauce a bit. It should be a sticky thick sauce in the end.
Add all the basil leaves to the pot and continue to cook for 5 more minutes with the lid on. After 5 minutes, mix the chicken around with the basil leaves and the preparations are all done.
Serves four people, each person gets a chicken leg. Enjoy with rice!