Tired of the same old chicken? Add some spice and a couple of
unusual ingredients, and you’ll have yourself some kickin’
chicken
The mere mention of chicken is enough to make many South Valley residents bow their heads in bored resignation to yet another humdrum dinner. But if family cooks arm themselves with a little knowledge and creativity, they can easily make a drab chicken dinner divine. South Valley restaurant owners and chefs have gladly offered inspiration.
Fresh Is Best
“There are two ways to cook chicken. First, you can cook chicken to enhance other flavors. If you do that, then marinate the chicken with salt, egg, cornstarch and oil. Soak it over night and the next day you can deep-fry the chicken or stir fry it with a kung pao sauce, or broccoli, asparagus or other vegetables. This is how to cook the chicken to work with other flavors and other ingredients that are more important than the flavor of the chicken.
If you want to emphasize the flavor of the chicken itself, you have to bring that chicken flavor out. In that case, you can’t use a frozen chicken. You get the best-tasting chicken by going to San Francisco and buying a live chicken at the store and having them kill it for you. A good chicken is fresh and it has yellow skin.
Take out all intestines, and put ginger and green onions in the stomach, rub the skin with salt, and wrap it in plastic. Let it marinate for about two hours in the fridge and after that, put the whole chicken in a steamer. Let it steam in a pan anywhere from 45 minutes to one hour at high temperatures.
After steaming the chicken, pour all the juice that has leaked out into the pan back over chicken. Pour it over several times and let it absorb as much of the juice as possible. Then you can use your hands to peel off the chicken meat or chop it into big chunks. For the sauce, take eight pieces of skinned ginger and two bundles of green onion and blend them up. Put oil in a pan and stir fry (the mixture), salt to taste and serve the sauce in a separate dish. You will be able to really taste the flavor of the chicken.”
– Tuyen Chung, a partner in Ginger Cafe, 8657 San Ysidro Ave. in Gilroy
Secret’s In The Sauce
“It’s better if the chicken is barbecued instead of roasted, and definitely put the sauce on afterwards. We coat the chicken in an apple juice mixture with spices, then season it and smoke the chicken for about six hours. We set the temperature to run about 180 or 190 degrees to get really tender meat.
We sell our sauce, but one of my favorite recipes that we don’t do here at the restaurant is to put a shot of Jack Daniel’s whiskey, and maybe a quart of apple juice. You kind of spray it on as the chicken cooks. It gives the meat a pretty robust flavor. You can get a spray bottle used for food service, or you can drizzle or brush the sauce on.”
-Franz Ingram, manager at Trail Dust BBQ, 17240 S. Monterey Road in Morgan Hill
Mixing It Up
“The best way to make chicken interesting is to put it in something else. People come in here for our chicken soup – it’s delicious. We use tomato sauce, a lot of chicken, potatoes, carrots, garlic, peppers, fresh tomatoes, onions … it keeps the doctor away.
We also put big chunks of grilled chicken in the fajitas along with bell peppers, onions and tomatoes, and we serve it with rice, beans, tortillas, guacamole and sour cream. They’re delicious.”
– Carmen Mendosa, server, and Ernesto Leon, cook at Victoria’s Mexican Restaurant, 757 First St. in Gilroy
Think Outside the Box
“We slow smoke our chicken for the best flavor, and different than just grilling chicken.
If don’t have access to a smoker, you can try and make our smoked chicken salad, which is really popular, with roasted chicken instead. Cook the chicken on a pit if you can, then de-bone it and cool it down in the refrigerator. Then get an assortment of lettuce, like iceberg, romaine, butterleaf and so on, and combine the chicken with the different lettuces.
Then we put bleu cheese crumbles over the salad, mango, pears, our fire-roasted asparagus, and we toss all of those ingredients with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. We put it on a salad plate and top it off with caramelized pecans.”
– Joel and Tricia Anderson, owners of Maverick BBQ, 35 Fifth St. in Hollister
Egg-cellent
“To do Japanese-style chicken teriyaki, grill the chicken first, then put the sauce on. Good teriyaki sauce has a little bit of sweet cooking sake in it that will burn if you put it on first. Teriyaki is not really a marinade because it will burn.
Chicken donburi is another good way to make chicken. It’s like a pan-fried chicken. You use a sweet sauce, sweet cooking sake, mix eggs into it, add dried seasonings and saute other vegetables to go with it and you put it on top of rice.”
– Chris Chung, owner of Ninja Sushi, 715 First St. in Gilroy
