Shangqing Chestnut Braised Chicken 上清板栗烧鸡

Shangqing Chestnut Braised Chicken (上清板栗烧鸡), also called Tianshi Chestnut Braised Chicken (天师板栗烧鸡), is a traditional dish of Yingtan (鹰潭), Jiangxi. It combines chestnuts from Shangqing (上清), a town in the Longhushan (龙虎山) scenic area with a tradition of chestnut growing, with free-range farm chickens, cooked slowly until the chestnuts turn soft and sweet.

How it is made

A feature carried by Yingtan News (鹰潭新闻网) describes the Longhushan method. The chicken is a local free-range yellow-feathered bird, and the chestnuts should be 'Frost's Descent chestnuts' (霜降栗), picked when their starch has turned to sugar and they are at their sweetest. A clay pot is heated until very hot, rapeseed oil goes in with ginger and garlic, and the chopped chicken is stir-fried over a fierce flame until golden and slightly charred before the chestnuts are added. Cooks then pour in half a bowl of water from the Luxi River (泸溪河) and let the pot simmer until the sauce is reduced to a honey-thick glaze.

Flavour and texture

Jiangxi Daily's Dajiang site (大江网) describes the chestnuts as sweet and soft and the chicken as tender and juicy, with a glossy sheen. According to the Yingtan News feature, the chestnuts hold together through the long simmer while giving up their starch and sweetness to the broth, and the chicken takes up both the chestnut sweetness and the savour of the sauce, turning so tender it comes off the bone yet keeps its shape.

Where it comes from

A story told about the dish has a Celestial Master (天师) giving a banquet at home, when his son slipped shelled chestnuts into the clay pot of stewing chicken while the cook was not looking. The guests praised the result, and the master had his cook refine it until it became a fixed dish of family banquets. Today Shangqing's chestnuts are sold under the Longhushan Chestnut (龙虎山板栗) geographical indication brand, and People's Daily reported in 2025 that chestnut chicken is one of the foods the town has developed for visitors. At wedding and birthday banquets it comes to the table steaming in its clay pot, and local people see golden chestnuts as a good omen, reading the word as lizi (利子), 'profit'.