Chinese Steamed Chicken Recipe (2024)

Super easy Chinese steamed chicken with ginger and green onion which only requires 10 minutes of preparation. Matched with a fabulous oyster sauce-based sauce.

Steaming might be the easiest way of cooking chicken. Steaming is a really popular cooking method in every Chinese kitchen. Steamed dishes are simple, quick, and always tender in texture. Simply marinate the chicken chunks for minutes to obtain a basic flavor, then transfer them to a steamer and steam. That’s so simple. I have made this steamed chicken recipe several times this summer.

Why steaming

People in Guangdong and Guangxi provinces love to serve this chicken directly since the steamed chicken keeps the natural taste of a high-quality chicken. There are lots of umami components in chicken meat. Steaming can preserve the flavor to the maximum.

Ingredients needed

• Organic younger chicken: younger chicken is commonly used in steamed dishes, stir-fried or poached chicken.
• green onion: also known as spring onion. It helps to enhance the flavor and move the raw taste of the chicken. Green onions can be replaced by scallions.
• ginger: ginger is an important aromatic for food that use fewer seasonings. It helps to remove the raw taste.
• Shaoxing wine: also known as Chinese cooking wine. It is widely used in meat dishes. You can substitute with dry sherry if desired.
• salt to taste: since we will serve with a dipping sauce, spare the salt amount to make the chicken meat refreshing.
• light soy sauce: light soy sauce gives a basic Umami flavor to the chicken.

The oyster-based sauce

I developed this oyster-based dipping sauce for this super simple steamed chicken. Oyster sauce is a savory, thick paste sauce popular in southern China. It goes super well with blanched vegetables and proteins. The reason why I choose an oyster sauce-based sauce is because of the thick paste texture, making it working not as a regular dipping sauce but as a lovely thick coating. This will form a very strong comparison with the juicy and tender steamed chicken.

Instructions

Spread the marinating sauce evenly on the cleaned chicken—every place. Put ginger and green onion shreds on top and marinate at least for 30 minutes. If you are not in a hurry, I would suggest preparing the chicken in the morning and making this as lunch or dinner.

Steaming Tips

1. If you get a rice cooker, you can choose to steam this along with the steamed rice. Simply get a rice cooker steamer. It's a lovely idea to save energy and time.
2. Or you can also choose to steam this in a regular steamer for around 20 minutes.

More quick and easy