Mount Tai Stir-Fried Chicken 泰山炒鸡
Mount Tai Stir-Fried Chicken is featured among the local specialties of Shandong.
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Mount Tai Stir-Fried Chicken (泰山炒鸡) is a dish of chopped free-range chicken fried hard with chillies, from Tai'an (泰安) in Shandong. The Taishan District (泰山区) government says it grew out of the chicken that Tai'an families stir-fried when entertaining guests, and that it is still an essential dish when Tai'an people host a meal. The Daiyue District (岱岳区) media centre counts it among the 'four old dishes of Mount Tai' (泰山老四样).
Ingredients
The dish is built on local caochi (草鸡), free-range country chickens. The Daiyue District media centre says an authentic version usually uses a local bird with a bright red, upright comb, raised free-range at the foot of Mount Tai (泰山) on wild greens and millet and cooked once it is over eight months old, when the meat is firm and springy. Spring onion, ginger, Sichuan pepper and chilli flavour the oil, and green peppers and garlic go in with the chicken.
How it is made
The chicken is washed and chopped into pieces. Onion, ginger, Sichuan pepper and chilli are fried in hot oil, then the chicken is added and fried hard over high heat with seasoning, with green pepper and garlic joining it until the dish turns a glossy red. The Tai'an culture and tourism bureau lists chopping, marinating, and frying and boiling (炸煮) among the steps and says the cook has to judge heat and timing so that the meat ends up crisp outside and tender inside. A Daiyue chef quoted by the district media centre adds sugar, cassia bark and angelica root (白芷) to take away the gamy smell, and warns that too much soy sauce masks the taste of the ingredients.
The Taishan District government names several styles: dry-fried (干炒), bian-fried (煸炒), fried in sauce, home-style, and Mount Tai mushroom chicken (泰山蘑菇鸡).
Flavour and texture
The sauce is rich and glossy. The Daiyue media centre describes the dish as salty without being greasy and hot without being oily, with the vegetables tasting fresh and slightly sweet and the chilli carrying the smell of garlic. Chicken is a common sight on Tai'an tables, where a saying holds that 'there is no feast without chicken' (无鸡不成席) and the bird stands for good fortune.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.