Chicken and Mushrooms

This chicken and mushrooms recipe is such a savory and satisfyingly delicious dish for any night of the week! The dried shiitake mushrooms, salty soy sauce, and sweetness of the brown sugar gives this dish huge umami flavor and goes great with a side of nice hot rice. Best of all it’s quick and easy to make with only a few basic ingredients.

First of all, get your hands on some good quality dried shiitake mushrooms. Make sure you buy the ones with white gills and pick the ones that are round, big, and thick capped. You want to give them a quick rinse to remove any dirt before you soak to rehydrate and then make sure you save a bit of the soaking water for cooking later as that’s where all the great mushroomy flavor and goodies are!

Now for this recipe I like to use a whole young chicken and have my husband do the dirty work and help chop it up into bite size pieces haha! Young chicken meat is sweet and tender and cooks quickly in the wok, but if you don’t have it on hand chicken thighs or legs cut into chunks work just as well. Another trick in Chinese cookery is to flavor the oil before browning your meat, so one key step here is to fry the aromatics, in this case the ginger and green onions, for a few minutes until browned and fragrant. The Shaoxing wine and hint of sesame oil at the end also gives this dish a nice added savoriness. After braising the chicken with the mushrooms until the sauce becomes thick and syrupy it’s ready to eat!

We love to cook this often in our house and it’s one of those dishes that taste even better the next day for lunch. Give it a try and let me know in the comments below!

Chicken and Mushrooms

Prep time: 5 min     
Cook time: 25 min    
Total time: 35 min   
Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 whole young chicken or 5-6 chicken thighs
4 slices ginger
2 green onions cut into 2 inch long pieces
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp Shaoxing cooking wine
6 dried shiitake mushrooms hydrated in 1 cup of warm water
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp oil

Instructions

Cut the whole chicken or chicken thighs into bite size pieces. Meanwhile, slice the hydrated mushrooms into strips and save the soaking liquid for later.
Bring a wok to high heat and saute ginger and white parts of the green onion in oil for 2-3 min until golden brown and fragrant.
Add in the chicken pieces and cook until golden brown for about 5 min.
Add in the Shaoxing cooking wine, light and dark soy sauce, brown sugar, and sliced mushrooms. Stir fry for another 5 min.
Add in the mushroom soaking liquid and add a little more liquid until the chicken is just covered. Let it continue to cook on high heat uncovered with occasional stirring for another 15- 20 min until the sauce begins to reduce and becomes sticky looking.
Before serving stir in sesame oil and green parts of the green onion. Enjoy!