Chicken Mix Internal Stir-Fry, A Traditional Chinese Dish |  HOme Cooking

Haven’t had this dish for a while, this is one of my mom’s cooking, she will cook this for me whenever she feels like I am low in energy and weak when I was a kid, this is a refilling and replenishing kind of dish.

A lot of Chinese believe that if you eat something similar to your own body part, it will heal and strengthen the part that look alike.  To me, this is one of those dish that calls on the memory, I miss it especially when I feel weak and down, the actual function of this dish does not really matter, I draw the strength from the memory of my mom and my childhood.  It was damn delicious too of course.

Since my mom never officially teach me how to make this dish, I will have to draw it from memory, general cooking knowledge helps too … :P

What you need: Chicken heart, chicken gizzard, chicken liver, ginger, garlic.

For marination:  Rice wine, ginger, grind pepper.

For the sauce:  Soy sauce, rice wine, sugar.

Chicken heart, you can buy it in most Asian grocery store.

Cut the chicken heat into rough strip, maybe four straight cuts onto each heart.

Chicken gizzard, also a popular item in most Asian grocery store.

Also cut it into strip, it’s not important what direction to cut.

Chicken liver, this you have to make sure it is fresh, don’t use if smells funny or color look weird, cut into cube.

Garlic, minced.

Ginger, cut in to strips, lots of it, if you feel you already have enough of it, add another bunch.  Use it in the marination and also use it in the stir-fry, double dose!

Mix the heart, gizzard and liver in a bowl, add in the ginger, pour in rice wine.  Use plenty of rice wine, until it covers all the ingredients.  Put a some grind pepper in there too.  Traditionally, white pepper would be used, but I use black pepper here instead.  Mix everything well together, let it sit for no less than 15 minutes.  These were marinated for at least 45 minutes, the more you marinate, the more the meat will soak up the flavor of the rice wine, and the more it will reduce in its natural flavor, which you really do not want for this dish.

This is the rice wine I use, it’s Chinese, and not the cooking kind, the actual drinking wine.  I hate those cooking rice wine because it has salt in it, I can add my own salt into my dish, so no thank you.  This rice wine here is call Hua Diao (花雕), you can simply think of it as a kind of flavored rice wine.  There’s a whole bunch of Chinese rice wine out there, each with different flavor, the taste of your cooking will change a bit with different rice wine.  You can use all kinds of rice wine here, not limited to only the Chinese kind, Japanese sake can be used here as well.

Premix in a small bowl some soy sauce, rice wine and sugar.  This is the sauce.  I won’t give any measurement here, the sauce basically control the taste of the dish, and how you want your dish to taste is up the you, just like saltiness is a personal preference.  So, just use your finger and taste the mixture, if you like it, you will like the final taste as well.

The remaining is easy, the act of stir-fry is actually the simplest part.  Before you put anything into the wok, be sure to first rinse clean the marinated meat under tap water, and this is very very important, be sure to rinse it very clean and let dry a bit.  You can put it in a colander and let it drip dry.  With dry, I don’t mean dry dry, just make sure it doesn’t have excess moisture before you stir-fry them.  The ginger you use in the marination, you can pick them out and throw away, or you can keep it, the traditional way is to throw it away.

Heat the wok, use high heat, add in oil.  Once the oil is heat up, add in a new bunch of of ginger strips, I mean, go generous, extra generous.  Stir fry the ginger first.  When you see the ginger is brown a bit, add in minced garlic.  You can immediately add in the meat right after garlic, or you can brown the garlic a little bit, but remember, it doesn’t take long for minced garlic to get burn, so watch out.

You don’t have to stir-fry long, especially if you use high heat, once the meat is cook and brown a bit, right before you bring out the dish, add in the sauce mixture, stir, bring it to a boil, reduce the sauce just a bit, and serve.

It turns out to be a very good dish, tasty, A hearty dish, I am very happy with it, eat with rice, and it will warm you right up :)

Let me know if you have any question making this dish.

-Lumaca