Colm O'Gorman celebrates Chinese New Year with a delicious lemon chicken recipe 

You can't beat crispy pieces of tender fried chicken drizzled in a zesty, sweet lemon sauce

'The sauce that I developed for this recipe is nicely balanced and not overly sweet.'

It is Chinese New Year this Saturday, the start of the Year of the Rabbit. If you live in a larger town or city, you will likely be able to attend some organised festivities to mark the occasion, including no doubt some fabulous Chinese food. If you cannot attend those festivities, you could always cook some lovely Chinese food at home. We will be having friends over for a bit of a feast on Saturday night, and this Lemon Chicken dish will definitely be on the menu.

Chinese food was one of the first world cuisines I ever tasted. I can still remember the first time my Dad brought home a takeaway from the newly opened Chinese restaurant in Wexford where we lived. It was the very late 1970s and this was exotic fare at the time. We had Sweet and Sour Chicken and noodles, and Lemon Chicken with rice. I loved it.

I still adore Lemon Chicken; crispy pieces of tender fried chicken drizzled in a zesty, sweet lemon sauce, just fabulous. The sauce that I developed for this recipe is nicely balanced and not overly sweet. For sweetness I use both honey and sugar, and balance that out with soy sauce and fish sauce. You could use just sugar if you like, but I love the little additional complexity the honey brings. Do not use just honey though, or you risk the sauce tasting a bit medicinal.

Lemon chicken

recipe by:Colm O'Gorman

Serve this with some greens stir fried in sesame oil with soy sauce and garlic, and some noodles or plain boiled rice.

Servings

4

Preparation Time

 15 mins

Cooking Time

 30 mins

Total Time

 45 mins

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 400g boneless, skinless chicken breasts

• 2 cloves garlic

• 1 tbsp fresh grated ginger

• 2 tbsp rice wine or sherry

• 100g cornflour

• 2 tbsp sesame oil

• 1 shallot

• 1 red chilli finely chopped

• 2 lemons

• 250ml chicken stock

• 1 tsp fish sauce

• 1-2 tbsp soy sauce

• 1 tbsp honey

• 2 tbsp caster sugar

• 1 litre sunflower oil to fry the chicken

Method

1. Cut the chicken breasts into thin strips, about 2cm thick is perfect. Peel and grate the ginger and garlic, adding half of both to a bowl big enough to marinade the chicken. Add the chicken, rice wine or sherry and one tablespoon of the cornflour and stir well to combine. Set aside while you prepare the lemon sauce.

2. Zest half of one lemon, and then juice both. Peel and finely chop the shallots. Wash and finely chop the red chilli, discarding the pith and seeds. Heat the sesame oil in pan over a medium heat. Add the shallots to the pan and sauté for a minute or two until they soften a little. Add the remaining ginger and garlic and the chopped red chilli to the pan and cook for another minute until the ginger and garlic lose their raw smell. Next add the lemon juice and zest, chicken stock, honey, one tablespoon of soy sauce, caster sugar and the fish sauce to the pan. Bring to a soft boil and reduce the heat to low.

3. Simmer the sauce until it reduces to about half its volume. This will thicken the sauce and intensify and deepen the flavour. It will take about fifteen minutes. Taste the sauce halfway through that time and add the second tablespoon of soy sauce if you think it needs it. I always add two tablespoons of soy sauce as I do not like my sauce to be overly sweet and I find this amount balances the sauce nicely.

4. While the sauce is simmering away, you can fry the chicken. Heat the oil in a large saucepan. While it is heating, prepare the chicken. Put the cornflour into a wide bowl and working in batches, drop in some of the marinated chicken strips. Toss the chicken in the cornflour, ensuring every piece is well coated. Shake off any excess cornflour and set the coated chicken aside in a single layer on a large plate. Repeat until all the chicken strips are coated in cornflour.

5. For maximum crispiness, fry the chicken twice. When the oil has reached 180 Celsius, you can begin to give the chicken its first fry, again working in small batches to avoid crowding the pan. It is important that the oil is this hot to ensure that the chicken fries perfectly and gets a lovely crispy coating. If the oil is not hot enough, the cornflour will fall away, the coating will be soggy, and the chicken will be undercooked.

6. Fry the chicken for one and a half minutes and remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon. Drain it on some clean kitchen paper while you fry the rest of the chicken. I do my first fry in three batches, making sure that I bring the oil back up to 180 Celsius between batches as it will cool slightly while cooking the chicken.

7. When all the chicken has had its first fry, bring the oil back up to temperature again and add all the chicken to give it a second fry. If your pan is big enough, you can do the second fry in just one batch as the chicken will be pretty crispy by now. Fry the chicken for another two minutes and remove it from the oil and allow it to drain on more clean kitchen paper or a wire rack.

8. To finish the sauce, blitz it with a stick blender or in a liquidizer until smooth. Return the sauce to the pan and heat it through. Arrange the fried chicken on a serving plate and spoon over the sauce. Finish the dish with a scattering or chopped or sliced spring onion and some strips of lemon zest. Serve immediately while the chicken is lovely and crispy.