Take out style Kung Pao Chicken with marinated chicken, the signature sweet-sour-salty Kung Pao sauce with the addictive tingling heat from sichuan pepper.
It’s an explosion of big, BIG flavours – and it’s a really quick and easy recipe.
Kung Pao Chicken
Kung Pao Chicken is a Chinese takeout favourite that is mouthwateringly good and highly addictive – so it’s a good thing it’s easy to make at home so we don’t need to order takeout every time we crave it!! We love the strong flavoured sweet-sour-savoury sauce with the signature tingle of numbing heat from the Sichuan pepper!
If you’re wondering whether Kung Pao Chicken is authentic Chinese, the dish as we know it outside of China is a slightly westernised version of an authentic Chinese Sichuan dish.
Traditionally in China, Kung Pao Chicken is a dry stir fry. Which means, unlike 99% of other Asian stir fries on my site like Chop Suey and Cashew Chicken, it’s not swimming in loads of sauce.
But with Kung Pao Chicken, the sauce is very intense flavoured so you don’t need loads of it. When it mixes in with the rice, just a bit of sauce goes a long way.
What goes in Kung Pao Chicken
Most of these ingredients are pretty mainstream Asian cooking ingredients. I’ve provided substitutes for the Chinese cooking wine in the recipe.
The ingredients I describe in a little more detail below are:
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Sichuan pepper
-
Chinese vinegar
-
Dried chillies
I like to use chicken thigh because it’s juicier than breast and tenderloin. If I make this with chicken breast, I always tenderise it using a Chinese restaurant technique using baking soda (bi-carb). It’s super simple, see directions here: How to Velvet Chicken.
Sichuan Pepper
This is the ingredient in Kung Pao sauce that makes it Kung Pao and not just any type of stir fry sauce. I describe it as a little bit lemony with a numbing spiciness, rather than hot spiciness like almost every other chilli.
I used to use whole peppercorns but nowadays I tend to use pre ground both for the convenience and also because it’s finely ground. In contrast, if you grind your own, there tends to be little gritty bits in it – albeit the flavour is a bit better.
Best substitute for Sichuan pepper is white pepper.
Dried Chillies
Not all dried chillies are created equal and in fact, the same type of chillies can vary in spiciness throughout the year. So for dried chillies, always taste them and make a judgement call on how much you can handle! Most of the heat is in the seeds which are removed.
If you really don’t think you can handle any chilli at all, use them when cooking but don’t eat them. The chillies add flavour to to sauce so don’t skip them.
What does Kung Pao Sauce taste like?
Kung Pao sauce has a strong flavour that is sweet, sour, savoury and with the signature tingle of heat from Sichuan pepper. It’s glossy and thickened with cornstarch / cornflour, and because it has such a strong flavour, this stir fry has less sauce than other Chinese favourites like Cashew Chicken and Beef and Broccoli.
Here’s what goes in Kung Pao Sauce:
-
Sichuan Pepper – described above
-
Chinese Black Vinegar – described below
- Cornstarch / cornflour – to thicken the sauce
- – subs available
-
Soy sauce, sugar and water
Chinese Black Vinegar
Looks like balsamic vinegar and, surprisingly, tastes vaguely like it. Available in Asian stores and costs only a couple of dollars for a big bottle. Be sure not to get Taiwanese or another Asian black vinegar (some taste completely different), make sure you get Chinese black vinegar (read the label!).
If you can’t find it, don’t worry, you can use rice wine vinegar, plain white vinegar or even balsamic vinegar. I’ve made Kung Pao Sauce so many times and tried it with each of these, and it’s actually quite similar.
Quick to cook
As with most stir fries, once you start cooking, things move quickly! It takes about 6 minutes to cook. So make sure you have all ingredients prepared and ready to toss in.
Key Tip: Cook the Kung Pao sauce down until it reduces to a syrupy consistency with quite an intense flavour. That’s the Kung Pao way!!
Phew! I don’t usually end up writing so much stuff about ingredients in a post! So I’m signing off here and handing over the recipe. Don’t forget the recipe video below! I think it’s especially useful to see the consistency of the sauce at the end – it should be thick and syrupy, and intense dark brown colour. Enjoy! – Nagi x
More Chinese takeout favourites
- Chow Mein
- Cashew Chicken
- Beef & Broccoli
- Chop Suey (Chicken Stir Fry)
- Spring Rolls
- Chinese BBQ Pork (Char Siu)
- See all Chinese recipes
WATCH HOW TO MAKE IT
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Kung Pao Chicken
Ingredients
Chicken
- 1 lb / 500g chicken thigh , cut into bite size pieces
Sauce
- 2 tsp cornflour / cornstarch
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce (Note 2)
- 1.5 tbsp dark soy sauce (Note 3)
- 2 tbsp Chinese black vinegar (Note 4)
- 1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine (Note 5)
- 3 tbsp sugar , any
- 1/2 tsp sesame oil
- 1/3 cup water
Stir Fry
- 2 tbsp peanut oil (or other cooking oil)
- 2 garlic cloves , minced
- 1 tsp ginger , finely chopped
- 6 - 10 dried chillies (adjust to taste), cut into 2cm/ 3/4" pieces, most seeds discarded (Note 7)
- 3 green onions , cut into 2cm/ 3/4" pieces, white parts separated from green
- 1.5 tsp ground sichuan peppercorns , adjust to taste (Note 6)
- 3/4 cup whole peanuts (or 1/2 cup halved) , roasted unsalted
Instructions
Sauce & Marinade Chicken:
- Mix cornflour and soy sauce in a small bowl until cornflour is dissolved. Then mix in remaining Sauce ingredients EXCEPT water.
- Pour 1.5 tbsp Sauce over chicken. Toss to coat, set aside for 10 - 20 minutes.
- Add water into remaining Sauce.
Stir Fry:
- Heat oil in wok over high heat. Add garlic, ginger and chillies. Cook for 30 seconds or until fragrant.
- Add chicken, cook until it turns white, then add the white part of the green onions. Cook until chicken is cooked through - about 2 minutes.
- Add Sauce and Sichuan pepper. Bring to simmer, mixing constantly, until almost all the sauce reduces to a thick syrup.
- Just before the end, mix through peanuts and green part of the green onions. Also check spiciness - add more Sichuan pepper if you can handle the heat!
- Serve immediately with rice - or for a low carb, low cal option, try Cauliflower Rice!
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Lucky 8: Eight more Chinese takeout favourites
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It sounds lovely, Nagi. But so many ingredients that I’d have to buy in. I think I will just order some from Oppies. Both their fish and chips and their Chinese are great.
4 chilli is more than enough, I like spicy food.
Fewer peanuts are better.
I recommend 4 spring onions
I tried the microwave long grain rice with this, it’s not for me.
I love your site but the new update of having to sign in to see the video is not working. I have signed out and back in and I’m going to the video from my recipient collection. I’m now having to go to YouTube to watch your videos.
Delicious, and so much easier to make than other recipes I have tried, a game changer! I was timid with the dried chillies, they certainly vary in intensity, and the tips about the black vinegar and Szechuan pepper were spot on. A new regular on rotation!
I had to use all the substitutions. Balsamic for the Chinese vinegar, Dry Sherry for the Chinese wine, white pepper for the sichuan pepper, and all regular soy sauce for the light and dark. It was still amazing! Much better than any other recipe I have tried and as good as or better than all the Chinese restaurants in my town. The velveting with baking soda was the trick I needed to improve all the other recipes. Can’t thank you enough!
First time using sichuan in cooking and it turned out great! Had to roast and grind the peppercorns by hand as couldn’t find pre-ground ones and it was quite satisfying. Made it less hot to make it child-friendly and omitted peanuts due to allergies. Kids loved it and that’s a win for me!
Love that I can create the taste of takeaway without it being so difficult. Thank you.
This was fantastic! My family said it tasted like it was cooked at a Chinese restaurant. I added red pepper and celery to up the vegetable content. Thank you!
Another delicious and easy meal everyone liked. Just a note: where I live there is limited Asian products. A Taiwan/ China issue. Anyway, I can only get Taiwanese Black Vinegar. I have used in several Nagi recipes. It may not have exactly the same taste, but it’s still very good.
Nagi, is Mature Rice Vinegar the same as Black Rice Vinegar ? Please advise. Thank you.
Not giving a “star rating” because something went terribly wrong here. I tripled the recipe cooking for a large family, including tripling the amount of sichuan peppercorns (used whole peppercorns that were ground down by hand). The dish was borderline inedible. It wasn’t even that it was too spicy, the peppercorns completely overpowered the underlying sauce (which you can tell would have been good otherwise). There was nothing pleasantly numbing about it (and I usually love Sichuan peppercorns when the proportion is right). What do you think happened? When multiplying the rest of the recipe, maybe you have to keep the peppercorns amount the same?
I made this tonight too and totally agree. It tastes so gross I added more peppercorns which made it worse. No one will eat it and I was so looking forward to it as it’s my favourite takeaway dish
Made this last night was really good , a tip for the Szechuan pepper I dry roasted then crushed in a mortar & pestle then passed through a very fine sieve no grit left only a fine powder
Hi Nagi, I had this amazing dish at a restaurant recently and I decided I had to re create it. Low and behold Nagi, you had already done the hard work for me. It was just brilliant, glad you had changed it slightly to add more sauce. I loved cooking and eating this dish and I also love discovering Szechuan peppers. Thank you so much for another tasty recipe. 🥰
Easy and tasty dinner! Thanks again Nagi for fixing my dinner dilemma every time!
Hi! I made this the other night and it was a great success! However, the flavour wasnt what I was anticipating from other dishes with sichuan pepper I’ve enjoyed at restaurants or from what I’ve cooked at home. I am wondering whether I should dry roast the Sichuan pepper prior to use? I bought a pre-ground but it’s coarse. Thanks!
What a difference decent Sichuan peppercorns make!!!
The ‘usual’ stuff available here in NZ is rubbish so I ordered some from the Mala Market – never looking back; I could actually taste the lemony back flavour before my mouth went numb.
Love it!!
I was so worried about this being too spicy – I like heat but my stomach does not. Only used 6 dried chillies with seeds removed, they were very hot when I tasted them so I thought that’d do. Went light on the sichuan (toasted & ground myself) initially also, only to add in the full amount plus more when it came to tasting. Loved that it had the flavour & heat without the burn that ruins the tastebuds. The numbing sensation of the sichuan was definitely there & the overall flavours were perfectly balanced. Served with steamed jasmine rice plus the supreme soy noods at my teens request. Only change to the recipe was I threw in some pink oyster mushrooms that I needed to use up & forgot to add the peanuts. Perfect amount of very tasty sauce!
Easy-to-follow recipe, quick to prepare and cook, easy clean-up, a delicious dish. Checks all the boxes – we’ll be making this again. Thanks, Nagi.
We’ve made this dish three times now and love it! It’s impossible where we live to buy Kung Pao that’s not filled w/celery and cooked in light, tasteless sauce. Thank you so much, Nagi, from our entire family,
I used substitutions for Chinese Black Vinegar and Chinese Cooking Wine, no peppercorns and Chilli flakes and it came out super tasty and kid-friendly!
Woo hoo!! Well done WM! N x