Guinness Stout Chicken

Hub handed me a cut-out (he does that very often) from our Star newspaper food column featuring Amy Beh dated 24 March. He said, "Try this", pointing to a chicken dish. "It sounds interesting". The only thing I found interesting was of course the stout. Never cooked with (nor drank) stout before but the overall ingredients sound promising and simple steps to follow, so I gave it a try. 

The only reservation I had was the marinade as it contained sugar and this dish calls for deep frying the chicken after marinating. See all the burnt sugar at the side of wok?

Anyway, the chicken after frying tasted so good (the nam yee gave the meat such a lovely fragrant) I almost didn't continue with the rest of the recipe. I would have left it at that if I hadn't gotten the stout specifically for this dish. Oh, now I know what I should have done...ate the chicken together with a bottle of chilled stout!!

The dish turned out very well as the stout gave the end gravy a velvety texture with a slight bitterness which was hardly noticeable (to the girls) and no taste of the beverage at all.

Here is the adapted recipe with slight changes.

Guinness Stout Chicken

1 chicken or 4 thighs and drumsticks, chopped 

Seasoning (A)

2 T (tablespoon/s) light soy sauce

1 T sugar

2 pieces red fermented beancurd (nam yee)

1 T water

2 T cornflour

Sauce (B)

2 T oyster sauce

1 can Guinness Stout

50 g rock sugar

1/2 t (teaspoon/s) thick soy sauce

100 ml chicken stock (or dissolve 1/2 cube of stock cube in 100 ml water)

Marinate chicken with (A) for few hours (I left mine overnight).

Deep fry chicken pieces in hot oil until golden. Drain.

Heat up another pan (as the wok frying the meat would have all the burnt caramel stuck all over), put a tablespoon of oil from the wok into the pan. 

Add (B) and bring to boil.

Add the fried chicken and simmer until the gravy thickens.

Serve with a plain boiled leafy vegetable and steaming rice. Yumzzz.