Hand-Shredded Chicken, absolute good taste!
There aren’t many cold dishes in Cantonese cuisine, especially main courses, so this one is quite nice in the summer if you want something a bit fresh. It’s shredded cooked chicken with jellyfish. Jellyfish is more tasty than it sounds. Actually to be completely fair, it doesn’t really taste of anything, we enjoy it mainly for its texture and obviously put it in sauce or marinade it in sauce to give it the taste. It’s often served at banquets, like Chinese weddings with roast suckling pig. You can buy them from Chinese supermarkets but I haven’t found any that are as good as the ones served in restaurants so if you’ve never tried jellyfish before I suggest you go try it at a restaurant first.
For this, I fancied making a version for a dinner party so I amalgamated several recipes I found online to come up with this one. The jellyfish wasn’t great but the chicken and the marinade was great. So give it a go and let me know how it goes!
Ingredients
- 300g chicken (I prefer to use any part but the breast as it’s less dry)
- 300g packet jellyfish
- 2 tbsps Sesame oil
- 2 tbsps White Sesame seeds (I had black sesame spare, so used this in the above)
- 2 tbsps Shaoxing Wine (available in Chinese supermarkets, or other rice wine)
- 1 tbsp Rice Vinegar
- Half tbsp Sugar
- 1 double thumb piece of Root ginger, peeled and sliced, or 1 tbsp ginger juice
- Coriander
- Cucumber, finely sliced in small matchsticks
Directions
- Marinate chicken pieces (with or without bone, with or without skin) in the ginger and wine for 2 hours or overnight
- Prepare the jellyfish as instructed on the packet
- Dry roast the sesame seeds (put dry in non-stick frying pan and gently heat till they toast)
- In a pan of boiling water, put in the marinated chicken and boil for 20 mins – don’t overcook as it will get dry (this can be done the night before too)
- Allow chicken to cool and then shred the chicken into strips (as picture above). Remove skin
- Mix up the sesame oil, rice vinegar and sugar in a bowl.
- Combine with the chicken with two-thirds of the seasoning mix and the jellyfish with the remainder in separate bowls and chill for 2 hours
- Serve the dish by layering first the cucumber sticks, the chicken first and then the jellyfish around the side
- Garnish with coriander and the toasted sesame seeds