Go to the Recipe: Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken (Yán Sū Jī)
Made this for my girlfriend and me tonight. She’s gluten-free, so I subbed light soy sauce with gluten-free soy sauce. The only real mistake was tossing in the full 7g of peppercorns into the marinade, but it still turned out great. I tried finding Sichuan chile powder, sweet potato starch, and Totole at Uwajimaya without luck. Should have gone straight to Asian Family Market since they had everything I needed. I used a mortar and pestle for the seasoning instead of a spice grinder, and it worked perfectly fine.
I also made a quick aioli to go with it, which I highly recommend. It was just one whole egg, 120g neutral oil, 10g lime juice, 3g Dijon mustard, 6g garlic, 2g salt, plus some lime zest, a little chili crisp oil, and a pinch of sugar after blending. Ridiculously good with the chicken.
Overall, this wasn’t much effort and it ended up being some of the best popcorn chicken either of us has ever had. Super flavorful, ultra crispy, and the seasoning gives that perfect tingling, numbing finish. 10/10, would absolutely make again.
EDIT: Also wanted to mention that Mijiu was labeled michiu at Uwajimaya, which from my research the only difference was Michiu has salt and is specifically for cooking. I didn't adjust any salt amounts and just used it 1:1, no issues there.
I picked up the sweet potato starch a few weeks ago planning to make this and never got around shopping for the rest of what I was missing in my pantry. I ground whole Sichuan peppercorns into the spice mix instead of sourcing powder and not finding vinegar powder locally, I subbed less than 1 gram of citric acid into the spice mix. I had everything else needed for the recipe. I had some chicken breast chunks left from trimming them for another recipe in the freezer and marinated them for just over 1 hour before setting up my frying station. My slurry did not get as thick or sticky as in Tim's video but there was enough of the coarse bumps of the starch to make insanely crunchy nuggets with lots of flavor. The spice mix was fantastic even subbing the citric acid for the vinegar powder. Don't skip it!! The hardest part of the recipe was finding the ingredients in my very disorganized cupboards. I hate wasting ingredients, so I bagged up the starch leftover from the dredging and froze it for the next time. I do this regularly with leftover breadcrumbs and my question is will the freezing have altered the starch when I use it from the freezer? I will be using this starch for lots of fried food going forward so thanks for a new tool in the box!
