Kung Pao Chicken

The formula

Every ingredient resolved to grams, expressed against the recipe's own base — next to the median of all 32.

	this recipe	typical
liquid	24%	20%
sweetener	8%	3%
thickener	1%	1%
aromatics	91%	34%
vegetables and beans	0%	22%
fat	0%	5%
acid	6%	4%

Adapts cleanly: dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free (documented swaps, applied on the dish page)

Ingredients

Weights computed by us.

500 g	1 lb / 500g chicken thigh (, cut into bite size pieces)
5 g	2 tsp cornflour / cornstarch
16 g	1 tbsp light soy sauce ((Note 2))
24 g	1.5 tbsp dark soy sauce ((Note 3))
30 g	2 tbsp Chinese black vinegar ((Note 4))
	1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine ((Note 5))
38 g	3 tbsp sugar (, any)
2 g	1/2 tsp sesame oil
79 g	1/3 cup water
18 g	2 tbsp peanut oil ((or other cooking oil))
6 g	2 garlic cloves (, minced)
2 g	1 tsp ginger (, finely chopped)
	6 - 10 dried chillies ((adjust to taste), cut into 2cm/ 3/4" pieces, most seeds discarded (Note 7))
450 g	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))
110 g	3/4 cup whole peanuts (or 1/2 cup halved) (, roasted unsalted)

Method: 8 steps, published by www.recipetineats.com — open the original ↗ or use bake mode for a follow-along with a screen that stays on.

“Made this years ago and thought it was great but always thought it didn’t haven enough sauce. So revisited it today and made it again and it was amazing! I subbed the chinese wine and actually only used half the amount of chicken cause it was all I had. It was” — a cook, 5.0★

“I have cooked this tonight and it is 100% 5 stars. I saw a few comments saying it was way too hot but I didn’t get that at all. I cooked as per the recipe with 10 x dried chillies. I used Chinese chillies as this is a Chinese dish. I removed most of the seeds ” — a cook, 5.0★