Szechuan Chicken
So I went looking for a szechuan chicken recipie online… I googled, as you do, and started hitting the top 20 or so links. I even hit the first 10 links at places like cooks.com…
NONE used szechuan peppercorns. They all just listed generic garbage like chili peppers or “cayenne pepper” to taste. ugh.
There is a tonne of “10 minute” recipes out there too. Most seem to think rice wine / vinegar is all you need. One of the top links is even a Betty Crocker recipe whose secret ingrediant is… ”bag (1 lb 5 oz) Green Giant® Create A Meal!® frozen szechuan stir fry meal starter”. Thats just pure awesomeness. Another mix recreated the zing of Szechuan Chicken with powdered mustard and texas pete hot sauce!
I also learnt some new things.
- Chinese pea pods = snow peas.
- Szechuan Chili oil recreates any meal prefixed by Szechuan, aka Szechuan {insert favourite food type here}
- Barbecue sauce makes for great “authentic” recipe’s.
The top rated recipezaar “Szechuan Chicken” recipe is basically nothing but rice wine vinegar and has from 13 reviews 4 and 9/10ths out of 5 stars… ridiculous.
No wonder you cant find good Chinese food in America.
I did end up finding a proper recipe which included Tien Tsin Chinese Chile Pepper, Szechuan Peppercorns and Arrowroot Powder… at The Spice House which is a online seller of exotic spices… So of course they need something to showcase szechuan peppercorns!
If Joy wouldn’t kill me because we are in a “no spending” mode, I’d love to spring for some unground peppercorns and the other two aforementioned spices.....