Steamed Chicken and Mushrooms (冬菇蒸雞飯)
A classic home-style dish you won’t find on most restaurant menus
This dish really epitomizes the elegance of Cantonese home cooking. The technique of steaming the dish is light and simple but maintains all of the rich, savory flavors of the mushrooms and chicken. It comes together quickly, which makes this a very satisfying weeknight meal. My mom and I had this in our weekly rotation growing up, and I never got tired of it! Normally, my mom asks the butcher in Chinatown to chop up a whole chicken into pieces for this dish. Since this service isn’t available at every butcher, this recipe uses skinless, bone-in chicken thighs.
I think many people by now are aware of the unique power the wok has to add wok hei to stir-fries, but I don’t see the wok’s steaming powers — which produces equally delicious results — as magnified in the public eye. It’s a shame. To anyone who says that Chinese cuisine is particularly “unhealthy,” I say — have you ever tried steamed Chinese food? That’s got to be one of the healthiest cooking methods around, and it’s one of the most commonly used techniques in Chinese home-cooking! (Not to mention that every culture has its healthy and unhealthy food, and that it’s worth interrogating what “healthy” food is and what the relationship is between diet and overall health.)
The Woks of Life has a nice guide to setting up your wok or pot for steaming. Even if you don’t have a steaming rack or bamboo steamer, the basic idea is that you need:
a dish that can withstand high heat (like a glass plate or pie dish)
a way to elevate that dish. Steamer racks have worked the best in my experience, but you can prop up your dish with balled-up tin foil if you’re in a pinch. Feel free to get creative!
a well-fitted lid to keep the steam in. It’s OK if a little steam escapes, but you want the majority of the steam to be cooking your ingredients.
This recipe takes advantage of the power of a few key umami-filled ingredients: dried shiitake mushrooms, dried woodear mushrooms, and salted turnip. Dried mushrooms are widely available at most Chinese supermarkets around the country, and when rehydrated, they provide so much more inherent flavor than their fresh counterparts. The shiitakes are excellent at holding flavorful sauces because they’re so absorbent, and the same goes for the woodears because of their little crevices (which also provide great textural contrast). You can optionally add dried lily bulbs to this recipe, though I think what it provides is mostly a slightly crunchy texture rather than flavor.
It may be harder for you to find salted turnip — at stores this may be labeled “preserved turnip” or chung choy (沖菜). You may see it as one big turnip quarter (my preference) or as little batons of salted turnip. Either are fine to use. Rather than provide a sour or sweet flavor, they provide a truly delicious and unique source of salt to the dish, kind of like capers. And just like capers, you shouldn’t overload a dish with it, or else it’ll come out too salty.
the recipe
Serves 2 (with leftovers!)
Ingredients:
1 lb skinless, bone-in chicken thighs
1.5 oz dried shiitake mushrooms
0.5 oz dried woodear mushrooms
0.5 oz chung choy
3 Tbsp soy sauce
0.75 Tbsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp neutral oil
Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms (in advance, preferably): You can do this in a couple different ways. I like to soak the mushrooms in room temperature water for at least a few hours (you can soak them overnight or start soaking them in the morning before you leave for work so they are ready for you by dinnertime). If you can’t do that or you forgot to soak them in advance, you can soak them in boiling water for about 20-30 minutes or until they’re fully rehydrated. You’ll know that they’re done soaking when they’ve grown bigger and are soft and pliable with no more hard parts. You can save the soaking liquid to make shiitake dashi at a later time!
Soak the woodear mushrooms (no need to do this in advance): You can simply soak the woodears in room temperature water for about ten minutes or so. They are thinner, so they should rehydrate fairly quickly. Like the shiitakes, you’ll know when they are done when they are big, soft, and pliable.
Prepare the chung choy and rehydrated mushrooms: Cut off a few slices of chung choy, and give them a quick rinse so that the dish isn’t too salty. Julienne the slices. Chop the rehydrated shiitake mushrooms in half (no need to do so for small mushrooms.) Chop the woodear mushrooms into 1 inch pieces.
Prepare the chicken: Trim any excess fat. Dice the chicken thighs into 1-2 inch pieces. Cut as much meat as you can around and off the bone, but know that it’s also fine to leave some meat on the bone. The bone adds a crucial amount of flavor to the dish that I didn’t get from testing this dish with boneless thighs.
Assemble the ingredients onto a heat-proof dish that will fit inside your wok: Combine the mushrooms, chung choy, and chicken. Add the soy sauce, cornstarch, and neutral oil. The cornstarch is crucial to keeping in the moisture of your ingredients and will make the chicken tender — doing just half of the velveting process produces great results.
Set up your wok (or large pot) for steaming. Fill your wok with a few inches of water and set the heat to high. Cover the wok to make it boil faster. (PV=nRT, anyone?) While you wait for the water to boil, your ingredients are undergoing a quick marinade.
Steam: Put the dish onto the steaming apparatus in your wok and then cover the wok. It will be there for about 16 minutes total, or until everything is cooked through. At around the 9-10 minute mark, give everything a good mix so that the steam can touch the uncooked parts of the chicken. Once the 16 minutes are up, try one of the bigger pieces of chicken to see if it’s fully cooked. If it’s not fully cooked, give the contents another stir and cover it again for another couple minutes.
Serve: This recipe goes well with white rice and choy.
‘Til next time,
Shannon