Beijing-Style Smoked Chicken (燻雞)

Pei-Mei's Chinese Cookbook is a source of endless fascination for me. The three-volume set has been my main reference for Chinese food for the last six years. With hundreds of recipes from all over China, the breadth is not lacking. Sometimes, however, the depth does. As I've mentioned before, every recipe is exactly one page long, shown on facing pages in Chinese and English. Inevitably, this means quite a few recipes are pretty low on detail. Sometimes the instructions don't make sense, which is probably a combination of translation and a general vagueness you see in 1960s recipes of all origins. 

Most of the time, Pei-Mei hasn't steered me wrong, although I do often make adjustments to modernize the recipes or make them more accessible. This time, I tackled her Beijing-style smoked chicken. I had not, until attempting this, ever smoked food before, so I didn't really have a baseline for what to expect. Although the final product was pretty good, I floundered around a bit with the instructions as the heat  levels and cooking times Pei-Mei suggests were way off. As such, I'll provide more commentary than usual in the instructions section. I plan to do an update post next time I try the dish.

Despite the confusing instructions and some of my own mistakes, the chicken came out well. It was almost startling how much smoky flavor made its way into the meat, which was also still quite juicy. I served with rice and stir-fried broccoli and garlic. 

Ingredients

• 2 lb. skin-on chicken (half chicken, leg quarters, etc.)
• Salt
• 1 green onion
• 3 slices ginger
• 2 pieces star anise
• 1 piece Chinese cinnamon
• 1/4 cup light soy sauce
• 1/4 cup dark soy sauce
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup black tea leaves
• 1/2 cup flour
• Sesame oil or rendered chicken fat

Instructions

Pei-Mei suggests using a whole young chicken of about 2 1/2 lb. It's not easy to get this in a U.S. supermarket. A good alternative would be to use half a 5 lb. chicken or chicken pieces. I used two leg quarters (thigh with leg attached), which were each about a pound. In any case, having skin on the chicken is important for the final presentation. I trimmed some of the excess skin for rendering.

The first step is to rub the chicken with salt and Sichuan peppercorns and let sit for 5 hours. I didn't have that kind of time, and let it sit for only 2 hours. I also omitted the peppercorns.

The next step is to poach the chicken. In a wok or other large pot, combine 8 cups of water with the green onion, ginger, star anise, cinnamon, and soy sauce. Bring to a boil, add chicken, and poach until chicken is cooked through. Pei-Mei claims this will only take 10 minutes. There is just no way the chicken will be cooked that quickly. It took me a very long time as I forgot to bring the water back to a boil after adding the chicken. I think 25 minutes is probably a more realistic amount of time. Remove the chicken and set aside to cool. Be careful handling the chicken, as it is easy to tear the skin.

For the soy sauce in the poaching liquid, I cut down the suggested amount from one cup to one half cup, which is in line with Pei-Mei's other smoked chicken recipe. She never specifies light or dark, so I went with my typical mix of half and half. In retrospect, I might increase the amount of soy sauce, since it's only there to flavor the chicken, and we never eat it directly.

Finally, we smoke the chicken. Empty out the wok and dry it off. Although Pei-Mei doesn't mention this, I took a tip from Kenji's smoked chicken recipe and lined the wok with aluminum foil. I also lined the lid, although I'm not sure this did anything. Place the sugar, tea, and flour in the wok and mix. Place a rack inside the wok and place the chicken on the rack (note: circular wok racks are also essential for steaming, and can be found in Chinese grocery stores). Here, Pei-Mei says to use low heat to smoke the chicken. Low heat did absolutely nothing. I turned the heat up to high until smoke started coming off the tea mixture. Cover and let smoke for about 10 minutes. 

After smoking

Pei-Mei claims we know the chicken is done when the skin has turned brown. The thing is, we already poached the chicken with soy sauce, so the skin was brown before the smoking even started. At the end of smoking, the tea mixture solidified into a burned cake. The foil allows you to easily take it out and throw it away. It's also worth pointing out here that most similar recipes I found online used rice instead of flour for the smoking medium, as does Pei-Mei's other recipe. I may try that next time.

Before serving, we brush the chicken with either sesame oil or rendered chicken fat. This gives it a nice sheen. I used chicken fat, which I always have on hand for my various Jewish cooking adventures. I made a fresh batch for this with the fat I trimmed from the leg quarters.