Pictorial: Steamed Chicken with Mushrooms

[hzrt8w]

Steamed Chicken with Black Mushrooms

The Cantonese steamed chicken with black mushrooms is a very popular home made dish. You may also find it offered in some Cantonese style Chinese restaurants.

The dry ingredients for steamed chicken.

I used black mushrooms, "golden needles" (dried lily buds) gum jum [Cantonese], and wood ear fungi. Just for a bit more texture, I put in one white fungus shui yee [Cantonese], (or Auricularia Auricula??) (the one on upper right).

Picture of all the sauces used to make this dish.

In the restaurants and most home cookings, people use chicken meat with skins and bones chopped in small pieces. My wife and I like white meats. I made ours with chicken breasts only. Cut up the chicken breasts into roughly 1 inch cubes.

Marinating the chicken meat.

Use a mixing bowl. To marinate the chicken meat, I used: sesame oil, ground white pepper, xao xing cooking wine, a pinch of salt, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, a bit of oyster sauce, corn starch, 1 big cube of foo yu (fermented bean curd), 2 small cubes of nam yu (red fermented bean curd), ginger slices. I even mixed in 2 tsp of hoisin sauce and a pinch of sugar.

Combine all these sauces in the mixing bowl.

Stir evenly. Leave the chicken meat marinated for at least 30 minutes, or a couple of hours is best. Don't worry if the mixture looks a little bit watery. When you add the mushrooms and other soaked dry ingredients, they will soak up the marinade.

Picture of the dried ingredients after soaking with water.

You must soak the dried black mushrooms, dried lily buds, wood ear and white fungus in water for at least a couple of hours before use. The white fungus is very pungent. I soaked it separately from other dry ingredients.

Drain the water. Cut the black mushrooms, lily buds, wood ear and white fungus into bite-size pieces. Note: The core of the white fungus should be discarded. Use only the outer, softer part.

Combine the black mushrooms, dried lily buds, wood ear and white fungus into the mixing bowl with the marinated chicken meat. Mix well.

Transfer the meat and mushroom mixture to a dish and place it in a steamer. Steam for about 15 minutes until chicken is cooked.

Picture of the finished dish: steamed chicken with black mushrooms.

[Pan]

I love this dish! I get it sometimes at Congee Village, here in New York. Well, something like your dish: It also has rice in it, which makes it less watery (because the rice soaks up much of the sauce). It also has ginger and scallions in it. They use salty lily buds, so the dish ends up a little salty. Oh, and they also use dried red dates. So is the dish I'm describing different enough to be a totally different dish, or is it just a variation with rice?

[hzrt8w]

There are literally hundreds of recipes/variations on this steamed chicken dish. Mostly they differ by the sauces to use and the accompanying ingredients. For example, sometimes I like to put in some bamboo shoots (slices). And when I first started making this dish, I only used light soy sauce, ground white pepper, cooking wine and corn starch.

One popular Cantonese style cooking is called "Rice in clay pots". Basically rice is cooked in a clay pot along with the main meat ingredients and seasoning. But the rice stays in the bottom and the meat mixture is laid on top (not mixed in). One of such clay pot dishes is chicken with black mushrooms. The item you had might have been one of those?

I also had a variation of "chicken rice in a clay pot" in a Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco. They use bamboo shoots and fish sauce in place of soy sauce, which gives its own characteristic taste. And lay in some fresh cilantro...

[Pan]

There are literally hundreds of recipes/variations on this steamed chicken dish.  Mostly they differ by the sauces to use and the accompanying ingredients.  For example, sometimes I like to put in some bamboo shoots (slices).  And when I first started making this dish, I only used light soy sauce, ground white pepper, cooking wine and corn starch.

One popular Cantonese style cooking is called "Rice in clay pots".  Basically rice is cooked in a clay pot along with the main meat ingredients and seasoning.  But the rice stays in the bottom and the meat mixture is laid on top (not mixed in).  One of such clay pot dishes is chicken with black mushrooms.  The item you had might have been one of those?

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No, they steam it in a big bamboo steamer, which they bring to the table atop a plate.

I like clay pot dishes too, however.

[hzrt8w]

No, they steam it in a big bamboo steamer, which they bring to the table atop a plate.

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Oh, the Cantonese cooking also make a variation where rice is place on the bottom of a small ceramic bowl (but these bowls have vertical sides), and the meat/mixture is place on top of the rice, and the whole bowl is steamed in a big bamboo steamer.

In Cantonese, it is called chung zhai fan (literally means rice in a small bowl).

[Tepee]

I'm really loving your cooking series...less thinking for my dinner menu.

I usually like to drizzle more xao xing fah tieu after this dish is ready. And I'd buy white fungus which is as unbleached as possible...you dunno what chemicals they use, ya know?

Edited September 22, 2005 by Tepee (log)

[Dejah]

The aroma of my chicken and mushrooms must have reached all the way to Sacramento! Daughter just finished off Tues's leftovers yesterday for a snack.

White fungus pungent? Really? I would think the black mushrooms would be pungent and the white odourless. This is the first time I have seen the white in this dish. Must be a HK thing.

I usually cut my black mushrooms into strips, add ginger and lapcheung. Seasoning is only salt, sugar, MSG and perhaps a little lite soya sauce.

Your choice of seasonings and added ingredients makes for a more robust dish. I must make it this way next time!

[Louisa Chu]

That looks so delicious! Our family version tends to be a bit more minimalist - with just whole black mushrooms and maybe wood ear. And I have to say that I like chicken wings the best - the unctuous gelatinous quality they lend to the jup make that alone the most desirable part of the entire dish for me.

[Ben Hong]

White fungus has virtually no significant flavour, but it really adds body and crunch to the dish. I have never used nam yu or fu yu in this dish as that, to me, would mask the delightful chicken/mushroom flavours. I use chopped up bone-in odd pieces from the chicken; neck, wings, hearts, giblets, bums and backs...ooooh the juices and the gnawing . Oh a few slivers of ginger is mandatory.

[hzrt8w]

I'm really loving your cooking series...less thinking for my dinner menu.

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I am glad you enjoy them. To me, thinking for dinner menu is very easy. I can quickly name 20 some dishes that I can make. It's the execution that's hard.

I used to follow the famous Hong Kong chef/educator Maria Lee's (李曾超群) website. I learned a lot from reading her recipes (only in Chinese, but a lot of pictures) - even how to make Peking Duck.

http://www.marialee.com/chinese/MyRecipes.htm

I also follow another recipe site:

http://www.leisure-cat.com/

A lot of Hong Kong style recipes. The website is written in Chinese. I think you can read it, right? It includes a lot of pictures. You can at least get some good ideas from her.

Edited September 24, 2005 by hzrt8w (log)

[Tepee]

Oh, I'm really jumping for joy! What great sites! THANK YOU! Thinking about menus are a bit difficult at the moment because the children can't take spicy food yet. And I try not to repeat a dish for at least 3 weeks. Fortunately, they are comfortable with western food too, so it's chinese/msian on M, T, W, and western on T and F.

The 桂花果凍 Gwai Flower Jelly found in the leisure-cat site really took me down memory lane. During my mother's past trips to HK, she will always buy gwai fa ko (our favorite HK sweet) for us...but really had to hunt for it on her last trip. It seems to be going extinct.

About my ability to read, it's 'half past six'....I'm english/malay-educated; chinese only as extra class.

Edited September 24, 2005 by Tepee (log)

[Dejah]

hzrt: I can't read ANY chinese other than my name. Just finished grade 2 when I came to Canada.

It would be wonderful if you could just translate the names of the dishes in Maria Lee's website. Knowing what they are can lead me to try and cook some.

Tomorrow, however, will be Caribbean food for me...I'm taking a cooking class!

What should I leave - slowly cooking - Chinese - for the hubby and daughter?

[saluki]

Dejah-- if you use Mozilla Foxfire as a browser you can get an extention that will translate from Chinese to English

make sure under view in your toolbar under character it is set for traditional chinese (the big 5)

Here is the extension site;

http://nazodane.hp.infoseek.co.jp/index.xhtml

Edited September 24, 2005 by saluki (log)

[hzrt8w]

The 桂花果凍 Gwai Flower Jelly found in the leisure-cat site really took me down memory lane. During my mother's past trips to HK, she will always buy gwai fa ko (our favorite HK sweet) for us...but really had to hunt for it on her last trip. It seems to be going extinct.

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You would probably like Cat's website. She makes a lot of desserts and sweeties. Something that I shy away from doing.

[hzrt8w]

It would be wonderful if you could just translate the names of the dishes in Maria Lee's website. Knowing what they are can lead me to try and cook some.

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Translating the names of the dishes are quite easy. But the recipes/instructions are still in Chinese though.

I've tried feeding the webpages through Google's language translator. But that translator only works with simplied Chinese (Maria's webpages are in conventional Chinese character set). Didn't work.

Edited September 24, 2005 by hzrt8w (log)

[SuzySushi]

I love this series too! And this looks like a dish even my daughter will eat (no flecks of green vegetables-- ). Thanks for posting these!!!

[saluki]

It would be wonderful if you could just translate the names of the dishes in Maria Lee's website. Knowing what they are can lead me to try and cook some.

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Translating the names of the dishes are quite easy. But the recipes/instructions are still in Chinese though.

I've tried feeding the webpages through Google's language translator. But that translator only works with simplied Chinese (Maria's webpages are in conventional Chinese character set). Didn't work.

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Yes, it gives you some idea , but still leaves you with tons of guessing.

[mrbigjas]

hzrt8w, thank you so much for this series of posts. everything has looked great and it inspired me to make steamed chicken this weekend... please do continue!

[JayBassin]

This looks great! Can you post your actual recipe? How much fermented bean curd and red bean curd do you use for this amount of chicken, and do you mash both curds?

[muichoi]

Very interesting use of fungus and fermented bean curds-never seen these used in the same dish before-but I am a little shocked at the use of boneless, skinless chicken breasts! It seems a very sensibly Chinese thing to understand that the flavour and textural enjoyment are in the bones and skin-which is partly why one should use the very finest artisanal raised birds available-how many restaurants do that?

[hzrt8w]

This looks great! Can you post your actual recipe? How much fermented bean curd and red bean curd do you use for this amount of chicken, and do you mash both curds?

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I dread that one day, the "recipe" question will come up.

I am one of those people who measures things by eye-balls only. All of the home cooking dishes that I learned from my father, we never wrote down the "recipes". And I hate being so by-the-book of using 1 teaspoon of this and 2 tablespoons of that. Besides, everybody has a different tolerance of saltiness, sweetness, sourness and hotness. I figured that it's better to let the readers fill in the actual cooking quantities to suite their taste. The quantities shown in the pictures, or otherwise depicted in the caption, are the actual quantities used to make those dishes. I will try to make a point to suggest some quantities in future postings.

I am waiting for someone to help me publish my cooking pictorials. Then I will sit down and measure everything.

Back to your questions:

1) Fermented bean curds, about 2 small cubes per lb of chicken

2) Red fermented bean curds, also about 2 small cubes per lb of chicken

3) Both bean curds are automatically mashed when you stir all the marinades

[hzrt8w]

It seems a very sensibly Chinese thing to understand that the flavour and textural enjoyment are in the bones and skin-which is partly why one should use the very finest artisanal raised birds available-how many restaurants do that?

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It is very true that most Chinese dishes are cooked with, if not a whole chicken, pieces of chicken with bones and skin. As footnoted in the pictorial, one may use any cut to his/her desire. My wife eats white meats only. Our refrigerator is stocked with mostly chicken breasts.

[Dejah]

Very interesting use of fungus and fermented bean curds-never seen these used in the same dish before-but I am a little shocked at the use of boneless, skinless chicken breasts! It seems a very sensibly Chinese thing to understand that the flavour and textural enjoyment are in the bones and skin-which is partly why one should use the very finest artisanal raised birds available-how many restaurants do that?

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Of course it's a very sensibly Chinese thing to understand that bones and dark chicken meat are the best...but try and convince some people of that is impossible. My half Chinese daughter does not like the texture and taste of dark meat where as my son (of the same mixture ) loves dark meat. I will eat anything! Even breast meat will taste wonderful if it is prepared well...silkened, seasoned and not over-cooked.

How many restaurants use only the very finest artisanal raised birds? What are these? You mean like the beef raised in Japan, with beer and massages?

How many restaurants can afford to use these and keep prices reasonable?

[muichoi]

No restaurants do-that's why plain food at home can be something special-and I'm not meaning Kobe beef or anything so glamorous, but the best organically reared chickens, for example. In the places where you can buy them cut up, the best parts are the cheapest-but a whole homemade deep-fried crisp chicken or salt-baked chicken is always better than a restaurant one because of the quality of the bird, though it took me years to master the wonderful and economical chinese cutting technique for cooked birds.

[JayBassin]

hzrt8w, I made your recipe this weekend, and it was terriffic! Thank you very much. I also used chicken breasts, and I took the skin off but left them on the bone, chopped into 1-inch pieces. I used all the ingredients. Total mushrooms and fungus about equaled the amount of chicken (by volume). I think next time I may add some black vinegar. I also made steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce and saute of pea shoot leaves with garlic and oyster sauce. Your recipe will become one of my frequent dishes.

Thank you for the pictorial, and keep it up!