Colm O'Gorman's Indonesian black pepper chicken - with a secret sauce that's easy to make

Black pepper chicken is a stir-fry dish, flavoured with garlic, onion, sweet soy sauce and lots of black pepper.

I can remember a time when takeaways here in Ireland were limited to chip shops and burger joints, and when pizza was a curiosity. 

I vividly remember the first time I tasted Chinese food when Wexford’s first Chinese restaurant, The Lotus House, opened on South Main Street in 1978. Back then sweet and sour chicken balls were the height of sophistication and seemed wildly exotic to 12-year-old me. A takeaway was a rare treat then, and I loved getting to try new dishes from The Lotus House. 

Everything was so totally different to anything I had eaten before. The flavours, the aromas, the textures, it was all so new to me, so different.

It was my first introduction to world cuisine, and I was hooked. To this day, one of my favourite things to do is try a new cuisine or a new style of food. Whenever I travel, I always make sure to work in some food experiences, either a food tour, or a cookery experience, or a visit to a food market. 36 years on from tasting that first Chinese takeaway, the thrill of discovering a new dish remains the same for me.

Ireland has changed a lot over those years of course. Many of us left and then returned, bringing our favourite food discoveries back home with us, and lots of people have come here from other countries and made Ireland their home. New restaurants and takeaways and specialist supermarkets have opened all over the country. We have never had so much choice. 

The Irish food scene has changed beyond measure, and our food culture has never been richer, stronger, and more diverse. Now we do not have to travel to try new foods; now the world has come to us and I for one, love that.

A few weeks ago, I got to try another Asian cuisine for the first time when my lovely husband ordered an Indonesian dish from a nearby takeaway. It was wonderful, and as soon as I tasted it, I knew I had to recreate it for this column.

Black pepper chicken is a stir-fry dish, flavoured with garlic, onion, sweet soy sauce and lots of black pepper. This is a simple and straightforward dish to make. The only ingredient that may be unfamiliar to readers is sweet soy sauce. This soy sauce is sweet, dark, syrupy, and is thicker than regular soy sauce. 

It is a very popular condiment in Indonesia where it is drizzled over grilled meats or used as a marinade. It is available from some Asian supermarkets, but it is very easy to make at home by combining regular soy sauce with brown sugar and cooking it down into a rich, beautiful syrupy sauce. I show you how to make it in the recipe below. It is a fabulous ingredient and tastes sensational in combination with the freshly ground black pepper in this dish. 

In my recipe, I suggest that you use two to three teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper, which I know sounds like a lot, but which is perfectly balanced by the sweet, deep savoury flavour of the soy sauce.

Black pepper chicken

recipe by:Colm O'Gorman

This is a simple and straightforward dish to make.

Servings

4

Preparation Time

 15 mins

Cooking Time

 15 mins

Total Time

 30 mins

Course

 Main

Ingredients

• 60 ml soy sauce

• 4 tbsp brown sugar

• 400g boneless and skinless chicken thighs

• 2 tbsp rapeseed oil

• 1 onion

• 3 cloves of garlic

• 1 green pepper

• 1 red pepper

• ½ chicken stock pot or stock cube

• 2-3 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• To serve: Plain boiled rice

•  

Method

1. To begin, make your sweet soy sauce. Put 60ml of soy sauce into a small pan and add four tablespoons of brown sugar. Bring the pan to a boil, reduce the heat to medium and let it cook for three to four minutes until the sugar is fully dissolved and the sauce turns a little syrupy.

2. Trim any fat away from the chicken thighs and cut the meat into 3cm sized chunks. Pop the chicken pieces into a bowl and add two tablespoons of sweet soy sauce. Stir to coat the chicken and let it marinade for ten to fifteen minutes.

3. Peel and roughly chop the onion. Peel and mince the garlic. Wash the peppers, remove the stalks, the seeds and pith, and cut the peppers into 3cm chunks.

4. Heat two tablespoons of rapeseed oil in a wok or large frying pan over a high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and add the onion. Stir fry for two to three minutes until the onion just begins to soften and then add the minced garlic. Stir fry for one more minute, talking care not to burn the garlic. Next, add the chicken along with the sweet soy sauce marinade and turn the heat back up to high.

5. Stir fry until the chicken is just cooked, about four to five minutes will do it. Add the chopped peppers, reduce the heat a little and stir fry for another two to three minutes until the peppers are tender and crisp.

6. Add half a chicken stock pot or crumble in half a chicken stock cube, along with the rest of the sweet soy sauce and two teaspoons of freshly ground black pepper. Stir fry for about two more minutes and taste. Add the third teaspoon of ground black pepper if you would like a bit more heat and serve immediately with some boiled rice.