Chicken with Mustard Sauce 芥末鸡

Chicken with Mustard Sauce (芥末鸡) is a cold dish of Weifang (潍坊), Shandong, where it is known as Weixian mustard chicken (潍县芥末鸡) after Weixian (潍县), the old name of the city area. Haibao News (海报新闻) of the Dazhong Media group counts it among the four well-known cold dishes of Weixian cooking, and Qilu Net (齐鲁网) calls it a centrepiece of the New Year's Eve dinner in Weifang.

Ingredients

Recipes differ in the bird. Haibao News, writing about the Fugezhuang (富戈庄) mustard chicken of Hanting (寒亭) in Weifang, describes free-range young cockerels with firm, chewy meat, dressed with natural yellow mustard, specially made aged vinegar and stone-ground sesame oil. A Weifang cook interviewed by Qilu Net instead chooses fat hens more than a year old, using the thighs for their finer meat, and adds hearts of Jiaodong (胶东) Chinese cabbage, which Qilu Net calls the essential side vegetable.

How it is made

Because the chicken is served cold, the key step is getting rid of any gamey smell. The cook in the Qilu Net report boils the chicken for two and a half hours with star anise, spring onion and ginger, both to remove the smell and to season the meat. Raw mustard is bitter and cannot be used as it is: he mixes the mustard powder with cold water into something like a noodle dough, pours boiling water over it, covers it for 20 minutes and then tips off the water. The cabbage hearts are blanched, steeped with vinegar and Sichuan pepper, and cut once cool. The dish is then dressed with the prepared mustard, sugar, salt, sesame oil and vinegar. The cook, whose grandfather was a chef, says his family's traditional method goes back more than a hundred years.

Flavour and texture

The dressed dish is yellow with touches of green and white. The chicken is tender and aromatic, and the flavour is sour, sweet, salty and hot at once, with a pungent kick of mustard that clears the nose.

How it is eaten

In Weifang it appears on the New Year's Eve table, and people eat it alongside the boiled dumplings (水饺) served that night. Haibao News reports that Weixian mustard chicken is sold through its own shops in Weifang and through franchised outlets elsewhere.