Bang bang chicken is one of those dishes, like piccalilli and bibimbap, whose popularity undoubtedly stems at least in part from its joyful-sounding name – in English, anyway. As the Chinese-American Leung family explain in their blog, The Woks of Life, “Bang, 棒” in Chinese, refers to an instrument used for hitting, beating and/or smashing”, which is the method employed to prepare the chicken, of which more later.
In any case, there’s more to this Sichuan favourite than just a memorable moniker. “Strange flavour” sauce, for a start, which is strange only in the sense of being unaccountably delicious: a punchy combination of hot and numbing Sichuan peppercorns, spicy chillies, tangy vinegar, rich sesame paste, salty soy sauce and just a pinch of sugar, it’s arguably the single greatest thing ever to happen to cold chicken, and that’s including the coronation of 1953. As happy packed up for a picnic as it is as the centrepiece of a banquet, I’d back this as the ultimate chicken salad.
The chicken
You certainly can make this with any cooked chicken (I try roasting some to make Nigella Lawson’s recipe, which uses bang bang as a vehicle for leftover Thanksgiving turkey), but classically the recipe uses a whole bird, poached with ginger and spring onions. Unless, like J Kenji López-Alt for Serious Eats, you want to break out the sous-vide machine, poaching is certainly the best choice if you’re cooking from scratch, because the chicken stays much juicier.
You may not want to make a huge batch, in which case go for breasts (and thighs or legs, if you like dark meat: a mixture offers a more interesting range of textures and, as the Leungs point out, more flavour, but white meat does soak up the dressing more effectively). Investigations by the diligent people at Serious Eats reveal that putting the chicken in cold water, rather than adding it to a simmering pan, yields more tender results. I like to keep the bone and skin on at this stage, so I also get a batch of stock for the freezer, but this is up to you.
For a really quick version, consider the smoked chicken deployed by the Ivy Cookbook (if you can get hold of any, that is – the stuff seems to have fallen from favour in recent years), but be aware that, though the smoky flavour works well with their sweeter sauce, my more savoury version may need adjusting accordingly.
Fuchsia Dunlop writes in her book The Food of Sichuan that the meat was traditionally hit with wooden cudgels to loosen the fibres, “so it could be torn into slivers by hand”, but concedes that modern cooks may prefer simply to tear or cut it into bite-sized pieces.
Whacking the chicken may be satisfying, but it gives the meat a curious, fluffy texture that, while effective for absorbing sauce, I’m less keen on – it feels as if I’m flaying the moisture out of it (in fact, the process reminds me strongly of watching an elderly Icelander hand-crank desiccated salt cod fillets through a press to make fish jerky). Beat the meat, if you like, but, as López-Alt points out, modern chickens “have fatter, plumper, more tender breasts” than their ancestors, so it’ll be more for your entertainment than any culinary advantage.
Non meat-eaters might like to try shredded firm tofu or the cauliflower that’s a curiously common substitute, though the texture of both is quite different from chicken. It strikes me that bean-curd skins might work well, but that’s just guesswork (for now).
The sauce
More important than your choice of protein is the sauce you cloak it in. Dunlop describes an “unusual but deeply satisfying combination of salty, sweet, sour, nutty, hot and numbing flavours”, but goes on to admit that the recipe was “one of the most difficult to commit to paper, because I have enjoyed so many different versions of it”. So feel free to pick and choose the aspects that appeal to you from those mentioned below.
The saltiness generally comes from soy sauce, though Lawson also adds chilli bean sauce, which gives her version a very savoury character that some of my testers feel, not entirely negatively, tastes a bit as if it “came out of a packet” (which, to be fair, the chilli bean paste does). Not everyone includes a sweet element, but for those that do, that comes either in the form of the Ivy’s sweet chilli sauce (“dirty”, “wrong but right”, “reminds me of a Christmas sandwich”), or Dunlop, Lawson and López-Alt’s sugar, which feels more like a neutral option. Sour is more straightforward: everyone uses black rice vinegar, with the exception of the Ivy, which douses its salad with rice vinegar instead.
Nutty, in bang bang chicken recipes for a western audience, often means peanut butter, whether that’s crunchy, as mentioned by Ken Hom and Ching-He Huang in their collection Exploring China, or smooth, as preferred by the Ivy and Lawson. The toasted sesame paste in Dunlop and López-Alt’s recipes is the more Sichuan choice and, though tahini is often suggested as a substitute, Dunlop cautions that it has a “very different flavour” – according to the Red House Spice website, zhima jiang is made from toasted whole sesame seeds, whereas tahini features raw or lightly toasted hulled seeds. This means it has a much stronger, more bitter profile – though you could substitute tahini, I’d mix it with smooth peanut butter (in a roughly 1:1 ratio, as Hom and Huang recommend), or use just the latter. If you have a taste for Sichuan cooking, however, the proper stuff should be easy to find in specialist Chinese food shops and online, or you could, like the Leungs, make your own by grinding toasted sesame seeds.
Heat comes from chilli oil (the Leungs, López-Alt and Dunlop) or chilli flakes (Hom and Huang), with Lawson and the Ivy relying on the aforementioned chill bean paste and sweet chilli sauce, respectively, to do double duty. I prefer the oil, because the fat tempers the heat into something more rounded and mellow than the fiery flakes that infuse it, and because it removes the need to add a neutral oil to emulsify the sauce. The numbing quality, of course, has to come from Sichuan peppercorns, which, though they don’t make an appearance in every recipe, ought to be mandatory: their tingly, almost sherbet-like acidity makes the whole dish for me.
The Leungs thin their dressing with the stock leftover from poaching the meat, which leaves it a little watery compared with the richer, punchier versions. Hom and Huang flavour it with grated ginger, which imparts a pleasing, sweet heat – though, as I’m including slices of ginger in the poaching liquid, I don’t think the flavour needs repeating.
The salad
Strictly speaking, this isn’t a salad, it’s a cold chicken dish, but nevertheless it’s often served with many of the same trappings – shredded cucumber and spring onion are both popular and, given the spiciness of the sauce, presumably included for their refreshing qualities. Hom and Huang also add shredded carrot and sliced radish, which look very pretty and get the thumbs up from testers, as do cold mung bean vermicelli, which bulk the dish out nicely, especially if you’re serving it alone. Lawson tosses through mint and coriander leaves, which bring a fresh zestiness.
Toasted sesame seeds are a common topping – black ones look particularly striking – as do Hom and Huang’s chilli slices, though if you’re going to use one garnish, I’d opt for the crunch of Dunlop’s chopped roasted peanuts.
Note that, though any salad vegetables should be prepared just before serving, the rest of the salad can be made in advance.
Perfect bang bang chicken
Prep 20 min
Cook 30 min
Serves 4
2 chicken breasts, or 1 breast and 1 leg (ie, thigh and drumstick), preferably bone in and skin on, or use cooked chicken
1 large piece fresh ginger, thickly sliced (about 50g)
1 tbsp salt
4 spring onions, 3 shredded
100g vermicelli mung bean noodles (optional)
1 cucumber, peeled, deseeded and cut into thin batons
1 little gem, or other crunchy lettuce, shredded (optional)
20g roasted salted peanuts, roughly chopped (or toasted sesame seeds)
For the sauce
2 tbsp chilli oil, plus 2-3 tbsp of its sediment
2 tbsp Chinese toasted sesame paste, or 1 tbsp unsweetened smooth peanut butter mixed with 1 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp sesame or groundnut oil
1-2 tbsp black rice vinegar
2 tbsp light soy sauce
½ tsp ground Sichuan peppercorns
1 tsp sugar
If cooking the chicken from scratch, put it in a pan just large enough to hold it and add the ginger, salt and the whole spring onion, washed and squished with the flat of a knife. Add cold water just to cover, pop on the lid and bring to a bare simmer.
Turn down the heat, uncover and leave to poach very gently for about 30 minutes, or until cooked through (the exact timing will depend on the size and shape of the chicken you use). Lift the bird out of the poaching liquid and leave to rest and cool.
Soak the vermicelli, if using, in hot water for about five minutes until soft, then drain well. Meanwhile, whisk a little chilli oil into the sesame paste, along with a couple of tablespoons of cold water to create a smooth, creamy consistency. Whisk in the remaining sauce ingredients, taste, and adjust as necessary.
Remove the skin and bone from the chicken, if necessary, then tear it into slivers. Pile on to a serving plate and surround with the salad and noodles, if using. Pour over the sauce and toss to coat (it should be quite saucy). Top with the peanuts, if using, just before serving.
Bang bang chicken: do you like it hot and numbing and Sichuan, or do you have a secret fondness for the sweet and nutty variety? And can anyone recommend a tried-and-tested plant-based alternative to the chicken?
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• This article was amended on 27 June 2024 to add the ingredients for the sauce, which were omitted in a previous version.
