Stir-fried Chicken with Yellow Bean Sprouts

History

This dish is a recipe recorded in the Suiyuan Shidan (隨園食單), the manual of gastronomy written by the Qing-dynasty poet Yuan Mei and originally published in 1792. It appears among the book's poultry recipes, the section titled 羽族單 ("Poultry"), which the book's structure lists as containing 56 entries. Yuan Mei (1716–1797) was a Chinese poet and, in his later years, a celebrated gastronome associated with his Sui Garden (Suiyuan); he lived and died at Nanjing.

One point of identification is worth noting: the 黃芽菜 (huángyácài) in the dish's title is a Chinese cabbage — specifically napa cabbage — not a bean sprout. Yuan Mei's method stir-fries raw chicken chunks in smoking-hot oil, deglazes them with wine, then seasons with 秋油 (qiūyóu), the "autumn-pressed" soy sauce that recurs throughout the book; the cabbage is blanched separately and folded in only once the chicken is about seven-tenths cooked, and the dish is finished with sugar, scallions, and aromatics.

Beyond its appearance in Yuan Mei's text, the sources consulted here do not document a specific origin place, regional lineage, or social meaning for this particular recipe. Claims that it evolved from a peasant dish into a dish of the literati, or that the quality of its soy sauce signalled status, are not supported by any source located and have been omitted.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken
• 4 ounces oil
• 2–3 tablespoons autumn-pressed soy sauce (秋油)
• to taste water
• 1 bunch yellow bean sprouts (黃芽菜)
• to taste sugar
• to taste scallions

Instructions

1. Cut the chicken into chunks. Heat the oil in a wok until it smokes, then stir-fry the chicken raw until it is cooked through, turning constantly twenty or thirty times. Pour in wine and turn the contents of the wok twenty or thirty more times until the wine has burned off. Add the autumn-pressed soy sauce (秋油) and again turn twenty or thirty times. Pour in water and bring to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, cut the yellow bean sprouts into chunks. When the chicken reaches seven-tenths doneness, add the blanched bean sprouts to the wok. Turn the contents three times more. Finally, season with sugar, scallions, and other aromatics according to taste.
3. Note: The bean sprouts must be blanched separately until fully cooked before they are added to the wok.