I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had Chinese food since I started keeping Kosher. There are no Kosher Chinese restaurants in Dallas so I’ve had to rely on the few Kosher catered events where Chinese food is served or the annual Purim dinner when our synagogue has Kosher Chinese food shipped in from New Jersey (I think). Sadly, they changed the dinner to Cajun food last year so I even missed out on my Chinese food fix then. Ugh. What’s a Kosher-keeping girl to do?
Well, the only thing I can do I suppose and that’s attempt to make some Chinese food myself!
First, I made a list of my favorite Chinese food dishes: Lemon Chicken, Orange Chicken, Orange Beef, General Tso’s Chicken. And then I got busy surfing the web for recipes. I focused on Lemon Chicken first since it’s at the top of my fav list and was lucky to find a delicious sounding recipe rather quickly thanks to CDKitchen.com – Chinese Lemon Chicken.
My original plan was to pair this yummy sounding lemon chicken with my favorite Chicken Fried Rice, but I’d nix the chicken from the rice of course because even I know there’s a limit to how much chicken one should consume during any given meal. But while the Lemon Chicken recipe isn’t difficult, it is a big, ole time suck because you have to fry a bunch of little pieces of chicken. I’m not complaining mind you because I ate 2 giant helpings of the lemon chicken once it was done, but I’m just sayin’ … give yourself plenty of time to prepare this dish.
Here’s the details from the CDKitchen site:
Ingredients:
8 chicken breast halves, deboned and cut into bite size pieces
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup water
4 egg yolks, beaten
2 cups cooking oil green onions, sliced
Lemon Sauce
1 1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lemon juice
3 1/2 tablespoons light brown sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons chicken bouillon granules
1/4 teaspoon ginger, or more if desired
Directions:
Combine cornstarch, salt and pepper. Blend in water and egg yolks. Dip chicken pieces into cornstarch-egg mixture. Fry chicken in oil for about 5 minutes until golden. Drain. Sprinkle with green onions. Pour sauce over chicken.
For the sauce: Combine all the ingredients in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring, about 5 minutes until sauce boils. Pour over chicken. This recipe also works well in a wok.
Since I knew frying up this much chicken was going to take some time, I stirred up the ingredients for the sauce first and had them in a pan on the burner ready to go. Then, as I was putting in the last batch of chicken to fry, I heated up the sauce. That way, everything was ready at the same time and both the chicken and sauce were hot and ready to eat immediately.
Now, back to the fried rice or lack thereof. Since I just didn’t have the energy to cook anything else, I simply served the Lemon Chicken on a bed of plain Jasmine rice. It was delicious that way and possibly better than my original idea of fried rice since those two sets of flavors might have battled for control.
Verdict:
I had 2 giant servings, which is sad since this is in no way a “low-cal” recipe. My hubbie had a giant plate, which basically added up to the same 2 giant servings I had. And my very picky 6 year old ate about 10 pieces of the plain chicken without sauce … This is not my first rodeo when it comes to cooking for her so I knew to remove a small portion of the fried chicken before saucing it up. Her exact words were, “Wow, this chicken is good.” She seemed shocked. As a side note, I’ll probably nix the green onions next time around. I love green onions but they didn’t really add a lot to this dish and they even had a weird flavor the 2nd day.
Happy Kosher Treif Cooking!
The Kosher Connection, an informal group of creative kosher food bloggers from all around the world, proudly present our monthly kosher recipe challenge. Each month we will present you with recipes on a different theme from all the kosher food bloggers.
This month is Chinese Food! Follow our recipes on Twitter with #KosherRecipes.
Kosher Treif Cooking 
Looks delicious!
Sounds good, I might add fresh lemon zest
Fresh lemon zest is a great idea. Next time I think I’ll nix the green onions and go with the lemon zest instead : )