Recipe: Chinese five-spice grilled chicken

Tehsee reminded me of this recipe for five-spice fried chicken. I haven’t cooked it for years already because normally, I hate frying chicken which had been seasoned with sugar or honey. The skin will burnt easily and the gooey, sticky mess stuck to the frying pan. However, my mom used to do it very often and come to think of it, it was probably the only type of fried chicken I ever ate back then.

I had done mine by grilling which will get lots of oil dripping out of the chicken. What you see in the shiny sheen on the skin is the cornflour gravy I made. Here’s my recipe which you can modify by omitting the wine:

Three chicken thighs
1 tablespoon of five-spice powder
1 tablespoon of Mei Kwei Lu (a sweet smelling Chinese wine)
1 tablespoon of white sugar
Dash of pepper
1 teaspoon of dark soya sauce
1 tablespoon of light soya sauce
1 tablespoons of oyster sauce
juice of one lime
Pounded garlic and shallots – around 3 each

Rub and seasoned the chicken for several hours.

Pour out the seasonings and leave aside. I used the following settings on my convection oven. Adjust accordingly to your style of cooking. You may fry the chicken or roast it.

5 minutes on microwave
20 minutes roasting at 200 deg celcius
5 minutes on grill – During the last five minutes, I slather the chicken with honey

To make the gravy :
Add a little cornflour to the seasonings you put aside. Take the dripping from your roasting pan. Pour the oil away if you wish to have less oil. Mix both and put to boil. Remember to cook thoroughly until boiling point. You will have a nice, smooth and thick gravy to pour over the chicken. My kids love to mix the gravy with white rice. Yumm….