Chicken Manchurian

You can substitute anything you like. You won't be shot for disobeying the recipe :-) Examples of substitutions include red pepper flakes, gochugaru, dried Kashmir peppers, Aleppo peppers, minced serrano or jalapeno peppers. gochujang, sambal oelek, cayenne pepper, etc. It's up to what you have at home, what you like and your heat tolerance.

I have been velveting chicken and lean pork for stir fries for 25 years, and I have never seen a velveting recipe include the yolk of the egg, or such a mountain of corn starch. Is there a reason specific to this dish? A normal recipe for velveting is, Per pound of meat: 2 tsp Corn Starch,1/2 tsp Baking Soda,1 lg egg white 4 tsp Shaoxing Wine, Soy Sauce, Sake or Broth Whisk ingredients together, add meat and toss Marinate at least 1/2 hour

use crushed tomatoes instead of catsup

I used gochujang instead of the garlic-chili, omitted the dried peppers, and added a tablespoon of honey. Let the chicken simmer for a minute or so in the sauce to make sure it was fully cooked. Delicious.

Huy Fong makes a good, widely available, chili-garlic sauce.

Dundicut peppers are hot. Very. I get them from Penny's. And bird's-eye chilis are equally hot. Tone it down if the heat is too much.

If the peppers are too hot/too spicy for you, consider using (dry) Kashmiri Chili Peppers, which are less hot/spicy though not completely so. They are available on line, even from Amazon. The ground version, also not too hot, is powder that confers a beautiful red color to your food,

I found the ketchup overpowering! I threw in all sorts of vinegar, extra soy, lime and cilantro to try to cover the ketchup flavor. Not a hit for me.

This is so good and easy. I used boneless, skinless thighs and subbed gochujang for the chili sauce, didn’t use any dried chilis, and eyeballed the ketchup. Served with brown rice and stir fried broccoli. It’s a keeper/ repeater.

This was delicious!

Reading the recipe, it almost seemed like a "quickie" home version of Kung Pao, without the peanuts. So I think I'll try it at home and add peanuts, some rice wine and kung pao vegetables (scallions, snow peas, mushrooms, etc) It sounds grand, thanks for the recipe!

Wonderful recipie, tastes great. Ketchup: who knew this would make the sauce work? I learned a lot making this that I can adapt to a range of dishes. Was not specified, but I let the green peppers and sauce simmer rapidly for a good 5 or 7 minutes to cook the peppers, before adding starch and cooked chicken. As to the hotness, I knew from tasting the bottled Lee chili-garlic mix that I would not add the peppers, but that’s me. Hot enough to reach for a ginger beer with rum.

I went with boneless chicken thigh because I'm not a fan of chicken breast in these recipes. Next time I do this, I want to try it on a meatless day and use blanched cauliflower in place of the chicken.

Whether it is available in your supermarket depends on the customers, Where I live there are a lot of Asian immigrants and you can find the sauce in the supermarket. Two common brands are Huy Fong and Lee Kim Kee, which you can find online, e.g. at Amazon. The sauce is easy to make at home. Recipes are readily available by Googling.

Very tasty. Substituted sirracha as no chili-garlic sauce at the store,, chile de arbol for the bird's eye chilies. Wiped out the pan before cooking the chillies and red pepper, and sauteed the red pepper for a couple of minutes. Definitely a keeper!