Yimeng Stir-Fried Chicken 沂蒙炒鸡

Yimeng Stir-Fried Chicken (沂蒙炒鸡), also called Linyi stir-fried chicken (临沂炒鸡), is a rooster fried raw with spices and then stewed until the meat comes off the bone. It belongs to Linyi (临沂), Shandong, where Dazhong Daily's news site describes it as the most formal dish for welcoming guests.

Ingredients

Cooks prefer a local Linyi rooster about one year old, whose meat is neither tough nor too soft; the free-running roosters raised in the Yimeng Mountains (沂蒙山区) give the meat a firm bite. Stir-fried chicken chef Dou Daohua (窦道华), quoted in a Langya News (琅琊新闻网) report carried by Qilu Net, says the supporting ingredients cannot be swapped: Cangshan garlic (苍山大蒜), small yellow ginger from Yuandongtou (院东头) in Yishui (沂水), Yishui red Sichuan pepper and pure peanut oil from Junan (莒南).

How it is made

The chicken is not blanched first; the raw meat goes straight into the wok. Once the meat turns lightly golden, the cook adds Sichuan pepper paste, local Linyi soy sauce and spices including star anise and angelica root (白芷). Boiling water goes in after the stir-fry, and the chicken stews until the meat falls from the bone and has taken in the seasoning. Chillies, garlic and lengths of spring onion are added at the end while the sauce reduces.

Flavour and texture

The meat takes in the spices as it is fried and then stewed, and the flavour of the chicken comes through with a rich sauce. A Langya News report carried by Qilu Net sums up the dish as fresh and fragrant, peppery and salty, chewy, with a thick sauce and soft meat.

Where it comes from

People in Linyi joke that "no chicken leaves Linyi alive". In 2023 the China Hotel Association named Linyi a "landmark food city" for stir-fried chicken, and the dish entered the national Landmark Food List (地标美食名录). Around the city it appears in many forms, among them stir-fried old rooster, dry-fried chicken, twice-cooked chicken and Sichuan-pepper chicken.