It’s not clear when the dish appeared on the local food scene.
The layering of flavors and stimulating, but not overpowering, chile heat are typical of Chengdu cooking. In today’s Chengdu, kung pao chicken is made by tossing cubes of breast meat in a hot wok with dried chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, white spring onion, ginger, garlic, crisp peanuts and a glossy sauce mixed to a particular degree of sweet-and-sour known as “lychee-flavored” because of its resemblance to the fruit. It was utterly delicious - but nothing like kung pao chicken as we know it. A young chef there marinated cubes of chicken leg meat in salt, Shaoxing wine, starch and egg whites before stir-frying them with fermented soybean paste, Beijing leeks and blanched fresh walnuts.
Kung pao chicken panda express how to#
When I was in Jinan in February, one veteran chef, Li Jianguo, invited me into the kitchens of his restaurant, Cuihua Lou, to learn how to make the Shandong version of stir-fried chicken: jiangbao jiding, or chicken cubes fast-fried with fermented sauce. Ding adored it and insisted the dish be served whenever he had important guests, who - in a fascinating quirk of history - included General Zuo Zongtang, the real General Tso. While in Jinan, it explains, Ding became known as a gastronome, employing in his kitchens two leading Shandong chefs, who whipped up a chicken dish using the local baochao cooking method (fast or “explosive” stir-frying). The restaurant is home to a small exhibition that includes a portrait of Ding in his imperial regalia and an account of the history of kung pao chicken. However his memory is honored in a local restaurant: Shunquan Lou, which occupies the former home of Ding’s concubine, an elegant courtyard house by a canal in the center of town. Like many imperial officials, particularly those who specialized in squashing peasant rebellions, he was not viewed kindly by the communist government led by Mao Zedong, the mastermind of one of China’s most successful peasant revolts.ĭing’s memorial temple in Jinan has long since vanished his family mausoleum was razed during the Great Leap Forward in 1958 his official mansion was demolished in the early 2000s during the city’s redevelopment. Today, there’s little public acknowledgment of Ding in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province. Most sensationally, in 1869 he arrested and later executed a presumptuous eunuch from the Forbidden City, a tale that entered popular legend. In 1867, he was appointed governor of northeastern Shandong province, where he became known as a forward-thinking man who strengthened coastal defenses and fostered modern industry. While the connection between General Tso’s chicken and its namesake, the Hunanese General Zuo Zongtang, is entirely invented, no one disputes that kung pao chicken is linked to Ding (1820-86), an eminent Qing Dynasty official known as Gong Bao (literally Palace Guardian) because of his honorary title of tutor to imperial princes. Yet although kung pao chicken is best known as a Sichuanese dish, its precise origins are hotly contested. Donald Trump was served kung pao chicken on his state visit to China in 2017 Chinese astronauts eat the dish in space. Most Americans will, at one time or another, have opened a takeout carton in their living rooms to reveal those juicy chunks of chicken in a waft of chile fragrance. More famous even than General Tso’s chicken, it appears on menus everywhere from Beijing banquets to Panda Express. The name of the 19th century Chinese official Ding Baozhen may be unfamiliar, but almost everyone has heard of his favorite dish: gong bao or kung pao chicken.Ī stir-fry of cubed chicken and piquant chiles, it’s one of the few Chinese dishes whose name needs no translation.
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