[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]
Soy sauce chicken is a classic Cantonese dish with legions of fans. Though it isn’t hard to cook, traditional recipes use ingredients like rock sugar, chenpi (a medicinal ingredient made from sun-dried tangerine peels), and Chinese rose wine that can be difficult to source in the US. Here, we take a shortcut with a quintessentially American beverage: Coca-Cola. The soda plays well with ginger, star anise, cinnamon, garlic, and white pepper, bringing sweetness, tang, and caramel notes to the soy-based sauce in which the chicken is cooked. Gently poaching the chicken guarantees tender, juicy meat, while an extended rest in the liquid coats the skin in a beautiful, even lacquer. Served over rice and garnished with scallions, it’s a relatively simple weeknight meal that delivers big flavor.
Published at Tue, 25 Feb 2020 10:25:59 +0000
