You can deglaze the wok with the wine and vegetables you’ll add next and retain all that chicken flavor. Pro tip: Searing the chicken adds tremendous flavor to the dish. (It should be about 80% cooked at this point.) Remove the chicken from the wok and set aside. Sear for a few seconds, and then stir-fry the chicken for another 15 seconds, or until it is lightly golden brown and opaque. (Heating the wok this way is key to Judy’s method of non-stick wok cooking. Heat your wok over high heat until lightly smoking, and pour 2 tablespoons vegetable oil around the perimeter. In a small bowl, mix together all the sauce ingredients, and set aside. Set aside.įor a complete guide on how to prepare chicken for stir-fry using this Chinese velveting method, see our detailed post on How to Velvet Chicken. Next, mix in 1 teaspoon oil and 2 teaspoons cornstarch until the chicken is uniformly coated. Massage the chicken until it absorbs all the liquid. Rest assured that you can use this recipe as a guide to make whatever version you like for your family!Ĭombine the sliced chicken with water, oyster sauce, and Shaoxing wine. Whatever variety of classic chop suey ends up on your table depends on what you find in your refrigerator that night. Use some leftover char siu, and pork chop suey is what’s on the menu! Slice up some beef or a leftover piece of rare steak, and you have a beef chop suey. Use sliced tofu instead of chicken, and you have a vegetable chop suey. Substitutionsīecause the meaning of the dish is “odds and ends,” feel free to use whatever ingredients you have available. Like the once famous Chicken Chow Mein, made with shredded chicken, onions, celery, cabbage, bean sprouts and deep fried noodles, Chop Suey was also the product of the early evolution of Chinese food in the US.
Whatever the story, chop suey became the signature dish for many Chinese restaurants, as you can tell by the many “Chop Suey” restaurant signs dotting the photo below of San Francisco’s Chinatown: Jackson Street, San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1962 © Bridgeman Images Others say Chinese chefs adapted the dish for Westerners using familiar local ingredients (celery, carrots, button mushrooms) along with some bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and bean sprouts to make it more “Chinese.” Some say it was brought over by Chinese immigrants from Taishan, a city in Guangdong Province and home to many of the first overseas Chinese in the United States. There are many stories about the origins of chop suey. You could add the last few carrots or mushrooms in the fridge, some celery, half a bell pepper, and a protein, like chicken breast or leftover rotisserie chicken, and voila! You have a chicken chop suey! The Origins of Chop Suey Today we might call chop suey a fridge clean-out dish. It’s a dish combining all those odds and ends into a stir-fry of meat and vegetables, coated in a tasty sauce. But that doesn’t make it any less tasty! What Is Chop Suey?Ĭhop Suey (杂碎, zásuì in Mandarin) refers to “odds and ends” or miscellaneous leftovers. Chinese food in America has evolved much since then, to the point where chop suey itself sounds like an outdated term. Today we’ve got a recipe for you that harkens back to the early days of Chinese immigration to the United States: Chop Suey.
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