Chilly Chicken

Chilly Chicken is one of our family favorites. Considering the fact that it is an Indo-Chinese dish, I used to think that it is a delicacy of the Chinese which we have altered to suit our taste buds. But now my realization is that it is purely an Indian invention using some of the Chinese ingredients.

If you search for a chilly chicken recipe on the web, you would get tons of them. And the interesting part is these recipes vary a lot in the way they are prepared. So I am assuming it tastes different to different people across the world. For us, the best chilly chicken we have had is from the restaurant "Open House" in Trivandrum. We have a list of restaurants that we would visit every time we go on a vacation to India and this is one of them. They do not have a lot of options on their menu, but their chilly chicken and paratta is one of the best I have tasted. So this is an attempt to recreate the "Open House" taste. The recipe is actually from my mom and I have tried to build on that. Not sure whether this is anywhere near the "Open House" taste, but it tasted good and we enjoyed it!

Coconut Oil	- 3 tbsp
Chicken	- 1 1/2 lbs
Onion	- 2 big (chopped)
Ginger	- 1/2 cup (chopped)
Garlic	- 1/2 cup (chopped)
Green Chilly	- 6 (chopped) - reduce depending on your spice level
Tomato Sauce	- 3 tbsp
Green Chilly Sauce	- 3 tbsp
Light Soya Sauce	- 3 tbsp
Dark Soya Sauce	- 2 tbsp
Corn Starch	- 1 tsp
Water	- 1 tbsp to 1/2 cup
Salt	- to taste

1. Heat oil in a pan. You could use refined oil as well.
2. When the oil is hot, add the onions and saute it until transparent.
3. Add the chopped ginger, garlic and chillies and saute until the raw smell is gone.
4. Add the chicken pieces to this. Chicken pieces should be almost cube sized. Boned
chicken would work best and taste best too. I used boneless this time though.
5. Immediately add the sauces - tomato sauce, chilly sauce, light soya sauce and dark soya sauce.
6. Mix everything well and add salt, if needed. Soya sauce has enough salt that you may not need anymore.
7. Let the chicken cook. Keep stirring in between.
8. When the chicken is done, check the amount of gravy in the pan. This would be water from the chicken, as we have not added any additional water to the preparation at this point.
9. Depending on how much gravy you need, use a tbsp to half a cup of water to mix the corn starch (could use corn flour as well) with out lumps. Add this to the pan and mix well.
10. Cook for 2-3 minutes and turn off the stove.

So if anyone reading this has had the "Open House" chilly chicken, make this and let me know what you think!