The Ultimate (& Easiest) Chinese Soy Sauce Chicken with Noodles - Marion's Kitchen

Simple ingredients and a few little special techniques make this humble chicken and noodle dish something extra special. This is my version of soy sauce chicken and noodles. The secret to this amazing dish is that we're going to use our braising liquid for the chicken to make like this awesome sauce for the noodles. So we kind of get a 2 for 1 bang for your buck with our braising liquid here. So let's start off with that liquid. I've got some dried shiitake mushrooms here that I've had soaking in some warm water. I'm just going to pull the mushrooms out. Just give them a light squeeze. Great thing about using dried shiitake mushrooms is that we get some extra flavor from this soaking liquid. So don't waste that. Strain the liquid just because sometimes you can get a bit of sediment dirt from the mushrooms. Keep that for when we do our chicken later. Now the mushrooms themselves. One thing that really irks me in restaurants is when they don't take the stem off the dried shiitake mushrooms because the thing is inedible. It's really chewy, it's not tasty and it only takes 2 seconds to take it off. Now all the aromatics that we want to use to infuse the liquid and the chicken. I'm going to start off with some ginger. I want a really decent handful of garlic cloves here. I just want to crush these. And some spring onion as well. I just want the kind of firmer, pale part of the spring onion here. I'm going to slice those. Save the green tips for later. Now into a hot saucepan, add some oil. I don't want my saucepan to be too big here because I want the chicken to fit nice and snug so I don't have to add any extra water to cover the chicken. You'll see what I mean later. In go the aromatics. Just give those time to have a little bit of a sizzle in there. That really smells amazing already. So comforting, that ginger and the garlic, yum. Now add star anise and cinnamon stick. Now for the soy sauce. We're going to use 2 types, both Chinese. One is Chinese light soy sauce and the other one is dark soy sauce. You might get a bit confused where the light soy sauce doesn't refer to light in salt or light in calories or anything like that. It's just light in colour. In fact, the light soy sauce is saltier than this dark soy sauce which is actually sweeter. Then I want some Chinese cooking wine, also known as Shaoxing wine as well. You can leave that out if you want to keep this alcohol-free. Then I've got that mushroom soaking liquid and some sugar. I'm going to add my mushrooms back in here. Just wait for this to start bubbling away again. Now for the chicken. I'm using chicken thighs. I find they stay juicier and I love the flavour. You can totally use chicken breast as well. It's up to you. The important thing here is I want to get the chicken skin side down, if indeed your chicken does have skin, which I love also. Because I want the skin to take on all of that beautiful soy sauce colour. You'll see here, because my saucepan is quite small, I've got a really nice snug fit in the chicken. It's almost completely covered with the liquid. If it's not, you'll need to add a little bit of water here, just so the chicken is covered. You might need to add a bit of salt there at the end. Here comes the little bit of technique that is going to keep our chicken really nice and tender and juicy and still flavour that broth. I want you to simmer this gently for 10 minutes and then take it off the heat, put the lid on and let it sit for 30 minutes. That slow residual cooking is going to allow the chicken time to soak up all those flavours in the braising liquid and give it time to cook through. At this point, you've been very patient. Your kitchen is smelling beautiful. Let's have a check on our chicken. This chicken is looking really nice and firm. I can tell it's cooked through. If you find that it's not, just put it back on the stove top for a little bit and gently simmer it till it's cooked through. I'm going to take these pieces out first of all. Don't forget those beautiful mushrooms. Then strain out that sauce. I'm just going to bring the sauce back up to a simmer. In the meantime, I'm going to check it for some seasoning. Oh wow! You will not believe the amount of flavour in there. I can taste the ginger and that beautiful soy flavour is rounded out by that little hint of sweetness with the sugar and the ginger. Everything, it's just so good. I will add a little bit of salt though. You can just add that to taste. Just remember, we're going to be using only a little bit of this sauce with quite a lot of noodles. Make it a little saltier than you think. Now let's talk about the noodles. I've got these beautiful Chinese dried egg noodles. You could use fresh egg noodles. I do prefer egg noodles for this one. I find they have a bit of body and a bit of richness that really goes well with this sauce. Pop your noodles into some boiling water. Loosen them up a little bit. Whatever you do, don't overcook them. There's nothing worse than soggy noodles, just like soggy pasta. Go for al dente here. While the noodles are going, I'm just going to take a little bit of that beautiful braising liquid. Pour that into my bowl. You want a little bit in each bowl. Now the noodles, they go into that sauce. I've got some green vegetables here. I'm just going to quickly blanch them in the water. They literally only take a couple of seconds. Then one of those beautiful mushrooms and the chicken. Cooking chicken this way really does keep it so juicy. I really hate those dry, tough pieces of chicken you can get on noodles. So unnecessary. Finally, a little drizzle of sesame oil. The devil is always in the details, my friends. Some sambal oelek or just some spicy chili paste, whatever you've got around, and a little sprinkling of spring onion. Now the real joy here comes with mixing those noodles in that sauce with the chili paste. So good. Now let's see if I can eat these ladylike without getting anything on my top. That flavor, I mean you would swear you've been simmering that liquid or that sauce for hours. So good. Chicken is so tender and infused with all those beautiful aromatics. This is such a complete and happy meal for me. Gets me every time. If you've got any comments or questions, pop them below. If you enjoyed the video, why not hit that subscribe button plus the little bell one. That way you'll get notified every time I release a new video. Thanks guys!