Lemon Chicken
Units
Temperature
Servings
Ingredients
Chicken and marinade
- 700 g chicken breast or thigh, cut into large flat pieces or thick strips rounded
- 22 ml Shaoxing wine rounded
- 4 g fine salt rounded
- 2 g garlic powder rounded
- 1 g ground white pepper rounded
- 15 g cornflour rounded
Batter and frying
- 65 g plain flour rounded
- 65 g cornflour rounded
- 4 g baking powder rounded
- 3 g fine salt rounded
- 160 ml cold water rounded
- 1 L neutral oil, for deep frying rounded
Lemon sauce
- 250 ml chicken stock or water rounded
- 60 ml lemon juice, fresh, added off the heat rounded
- 3 g lemon zest, finely grated rounded
- 80 g sugar rounded
- 15 ml rice vinegar rounded
- 3 g fine salt rounded
- 16 g cornflour, slaked in a little cold water rounded
- 1 lemon, thinly sliced, to garnish (optional) rounded
Method
Method
- Marinate the chicken with the Shaoxing wine, salt, garlic powder, white pepper and 15 g cornflour for 20 minutes.
- Make the sauce and hold it warm. Bring the stock, sugar, rice vinegar, salt and lemon zest to a simmer. Stir the slaked cornflour again and pour it in, stirring, and cook 1 minute until clear and glossy. Take it off the heat and only now stir in the fresh lemon juice. Boiled lemon juice loses its brightness and turns slightly metallic, so it always goes in last.
- Mix the batter just before frying. Whisk the flour, cornflour, baking powder and salt, then the cold water, to the consistency of single cream. Do not make it early; the baking powder starts working immediately.
- First fry at 170°C. Dip the marinated pieces in the batter, let the excess run off, and lower them into the oil in batches. Fry 4 to 5 minutes until pale gold and cooked through. Drain on a rack.
- Rest 10 minutes so steam escapes rather than softening the crust.
- Second fry at 190°C, 60 to 90 seconds per batch, until deep golden and audibly crisp.
- Slice and sauce at the table. Cut the pieces into thick strips, arrange on a plate, and pour the warm sauce over just before serving, or serve it in a jug alongside. Tossing the chicken through the sauce in the pan is how restaurants send out soggy lemon chicken.
Variations
Same batter and double fry, different sauce.
- Sesame chicken. Replace the lemon sauce with 120 ml stock, 60 ml soy sauce, 60 g sugar, 30 ml rice vinegar, 15 ml toasted sesame oil and 15 g cornflour, thickened the same way, then scatter 20 g toasted sesame seeds over at the end.
- Ginger chicken, the spicy one. Add 30 g finely julienned fresh ginger and 5 g chilli flakes fried in a spoonful of oil for 30 seconds, then build the sauce on top with stock, soy, sugar and vinegar. This is the version marked spicy on most menus.
- Honey lemon chicken. Replace half the sugar with honey, stirred in off the heat with the lemon juice.
Notes
- Sauce over, never tossed through. This is the whole reason restaurant lemon chicken has a crust and the home version usually does not.
- Lemon juice off the heat. Zest goes in early for aroma and juice goes in last for brightness. They are doing different jobs.
- The sauce should be clear, not cloudy. That means using enough cornflour to gloss it but not so much that it turns opaque and gluey, and letting it boil for a full minute so the starch cooks out.
- Chicken breast is traditional here because the flat white pieces show off the sauce, though thigh is more forgiving and stays juicier.
- Leftovers will not be crisp. Reheat in a hot oven, not a microwave, and add fresh sauce.
Ingredient substitutions
- Shaoxing wine substitutes with dry sherry, or stock plus a splash of rice vinegar.
- Rice vinegar can be white wine vinegar, which is sharper, so cut it slightly.
- Fresh lemon juice is not negotiable here; bottled juice is exactly what makes cheap versions of this dish taste synthetic.