Eight-Piece Fried Chicken 炸八块

Eight-Piece Fried Chicken (炸八块), also called eight-piece chicken (八块鸡), is a traditional dish of Henan cuisine, known as Yu cuisine (豫菜), made from a young spring chicken (童子鸡). A call-out used by waiters in local restaurants ends with "一只鸡子剁八瓣" ("one chicken chopped into eight pieces"), which refers to this dish. In 2018 the China Cuisine Association (中国烹饪协会) listed it among Henan's ten traditional classic dishes.

Ingredients

The Henan Provincial Tourism Bureau Information Centre (河南省旅游局信息中心) lists spring chicken, chicken gizzard, chicken liver and broad-bean starch as the ingredients.

How it is made

In the recipe the centre published in 2014, the chicken meat is boned, beaten loose with the back of a cleaver and cut into pieces about 4.5 cm square, then marinated for about an hour in cooking wine, salt, sugar, scallion, ginger, Sichuan peppercorns and MSG. The pieces are coated in egg white and wet starch, rolled in chopped salt-roasted peanuts and fried twice: once briefly, then again until crisp and golden. The cook drains off the oil, scatters ground Sichuan pepper and chopped scallion, drizzles sesame oil and rims the plate with coriander. The centre's note on heat control is to fry until coloured, hold the pieces over a low flame until cooked through, then finish over high heat so the outside is crisp and the inside tender.

Where it comes from

A legend told by the same centre says the Qianlong emperor tasted the dish while staying in Kaifeng on a tour of the river works, and that this made it famous. The centre credits cooks including Liu Genglian (刘庚莲) of Kaifeng's Youyixin restaurant (又一新饭庄) with later refining it. In September 2018, at an event it co-organised with the Henan provincial commerce department, the China Cuisine Association published the "Chinese Cuisine" (中国菜) list, and Eight-Piece Fried Chicken is the tenth of Henan's ten traditional classic dishes on it.