Chinese Lemon Chicken
This lemon chicken recipe is a traditional chinese restaurant recipe. If you like the mix of sweet, salty and sour, you will be delighted with this dish.
You will be surprised how easy the recipe is and once you will have tasted this homemade version, it will become for sure one of the familiy’s favorite chicken recipe.
It’s now time to cook, so check out the full chinese lemon chicken recipe below!
Chinese Lemon Chicken
A traditional Chinese restaurant chicken recipe
Ingredients
For the fried chicken
- 500 g chicken breast
- 4 tbsp flour
- 1 bottle cold beer amount will vary - see recipe
- 1 unit egg
- salt & pepper
- vegetable oil for frying
For the lemon sauce
- 250 ml chicken stock (1 cup)
- 1 tbsp maizena (corn flour)
- 1 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp apple vinegar
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 1 unit lemon juice
Instructions
Prepare the chicken
- Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces.
- Add salt and pepper to the chicken breasts and leave aside.
Prepare the batter
- In a bowl, pour the flour. Add salt and a generous amount of pepper
- Add some beer slowly and mix before adding more liquid. Add the egg and mix well again. You should end up with a batter that is nor too thick nor too thin, more like a pancake batter. You can adjust the amount of beer or flour to reach this consistency.
Fry the chicken
- Heat the oil in a pan on medium heat.
- Once the oil is ready, dip each piece of chicken into the batter then fry in the oil until the batter is golden. Fry the chicken in batches so that the temperature of the oil does not decrease too much.
- Remove the fried chicken from the pan and put in on a kitchen paper towel so that the extra oil can be removed.
- Once all the chicken is cooked, put in on an oven tray and keep it warm in the oven (100 degrees celsius / 210 degrees fahrenheit)
Prepare the lemon sauce
- In a pan, add the chicken stock, the juice of 1 lemon, the soy sauce and the sugar.
- In a small cup, dissolve the maizena in the apple vinegar. Then, add into the pan with the other ingredients.
- Bring the sauce to a boil mixing well all the time.
- Once the sauce has boiled, keep cooking until the sauce gets a bit thicker (few minutes).
- Put the chicken on a serving plate and pour the sauce. You can decorate with extra lemon slices.
Notes
Notes:
- The amount of beer to be added will depend of the type of flour you use as well as the size of the egg. It is very important to add the beer slowly to reach the good texture (pancake batter consistency).
- When frying the chicken, make sure to do it on a medium heat. If your oil is too hot, the batter will burn and the chicken will remain uncooked.