Taiwanese Salt and Pepper Fried Chicken Gua Bao 割包

Preparation

Prep chicken

Cut chicken thighs into halves for smaller pieces and thirds for large pieces so you have rough chunks. Place chicken in a large mixing bowl and mix in garlic, soy sauce, cooking wine, salt, flour, and egg white (sweet potato starch will be for coating later). Marinate in the fridge for at least an hour and up to overnight.

Make dough

Prepare your dough by activating yeast in 1 1/2 cups of warm water. Place all your dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, pour activated yeast/water into the bowl and mix until it forms clumps. Then, knead with your hands for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth like a baby's butt. Cover and proof for 1 hour.

Make pickles and sauce

While the dough is proofing, prep pickles by thinly slicing a cucumber width wise. Put cucumbers in a mixing bowl and add in the rest of the pickle ingredients. Carefully mix together to incorporate ingredients and set aside in the fridge until assembly.

To make the almond hoisin sauce, combine all sauce ingredients in a container and mix until combined and smooth (if it looks a little chunky I like to give it a quick 10 seconds in the microwave to melt down almond butter to make it smoother) set aside in the fridge until assembly.

Make wrappers

Lightly dust a work surface with flour. When your dough is ready, take out of plastic wrap and cut into half. Store one half with plastic wrap, then with the other piece, cut in half again. Roll both halves into two thin cylinders, about the size and shape of small hot dogs. Cut each cylinder into 6 equal pieces, they should look like marshmellows. Then, turn each piece cut side up and with the palm of your hand, press down onto it to flatten to make a roughly flattened circle. Dust each side with flour and then with a rolling pin, flatten to create an oval shape about a 1/4 of an inch. Fold each oval in half to create a taco like shape and set aside. Repeat with the rest of your marshmellow dough pieces until you have a bunch of gua bao wrappers. Make sure to flour each wrapper as you roll them out and then cover them with plastic wrap or cloth so they don't dry out.

Once you're wrappers are folded and ready, line a bamboo steamer with parchment paper underneath each wrapper (or get steamer liners with holes in them) and place wrappers on top. Place your steamer with wrappers on top of a shallow pot with boiling water. Steam on medium-high heat for 10 minutes until cooked through, set aside covered until gua bao assembly.

Bread and fry chicken

Once chicken all the chicken is breaded, set a large dutch oven or pot with 2-3 cups of oil and throw in a handful of basil. Turn the heat up to high to have temperature reach 350 degrees. You'll know the oil is ready when you start to see a light simmering of bubbles around the basil leaves. Take the basil out with a strainer and turn the heat to low-medium.

With the heat at low-medium, fry chicken in batches until lightly golden brown, about 2-3 minutes. Set aside on a tray with paper towels. Turn the heat up to high to get the oil to a hot temperature (but not smoking). For the final fry, place your chicken and basil back in the pot again to flash fry for about 30 seconds to minute until brown. Transfer to bowl with paper towels, Sprinkle salt and pepper. Serve fresh.

Assemble gua bao

Unfold a wrapper and place fried chicken with a few slices of pickles and fresh cilantro. Spoon almond hoisin sauce over the chicken and top with some chopped nuts. Finally pat yourself on the back for doing all that work and savor your sweet and salty gua bao with a big bite. Serve fresh.

Tip 💡

Making the wrappers a day before definitely makes this dish less daunting! Just knead and fold the wrappers, then put them in the freezer. You can cook them directly from frozen to fresh in the steamer on the day of gua bao assembly.