# Soy Sauce Chicken

Soy sauce chicken is an iconic Chinese restaurant favourite. This recipe is homestyle version, usually served as whole chicken, this one is lightly braised and shredded so you don
have to faff with a big Chinese cleaver.

- Total time: 55 min
- Cuisine: Chinese
- Category: Dinner
- Language: en

## Ingredients

- 4 chicken legs
- 4 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 0.5 tsp ground white pepper
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 40 g rock sugar
- 2 spring onions
- 5 slices ginger
- 3 small shallots
- 2 garlic bulbs
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 5 cloves
- 1 star anise
- 50 ml dark soy sauce
- 50 ml light soy sauce
- 50 ml shaoxing wine
- 500 ml water
- 2 tbsp cornstarch

## Instructions

1. Add the chicken legs to a large bowl and cover with boiling water for 30 seconds until the skin tightens.
2. Remove the chicken legs and pat them dry with paper towels.
3. Add the chicken legs to a clean bowl and marinate with dark soy sauce and ground white pepper.
4. Bash the spring onions with the back of a knife and slice them lengthways into three parts.
5. Roughly chop the ginger, garlic, and shallot.
6. On medium heat, add vegetable oil and rock sugar to a wok, break the sugar into small pieces, and stir until lightly caramelised.
7. Add spring onion, ginger, garlic, and shallot to the wok and fry for 3 minutes (add a touch of water if needed).
8. Add the chicken legs skin side down and don't touch them for 2 minutes.
9. Pour in the marinade, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, shaoxing wine, and water along with cloves, star anise, and a cinnamon stick.
10. Once it starts to boil, turn the heat to low, cover with a lid, and braise for 35 minutes, turning the chicken halfway through.
11. Remove the chicken to cool.
12. Strain the vegetables and spices from the sauce.
13. Add 2 tablespoons of the sauce to 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, mix well, then add back into the sauce.
14. Once the sauce has thickened, remove it from the heat.
15. Shred the chicken.
16. Serve the shredded chicken with a bowl of steamed rice.

## Equipment

- large bowl
- paper towels
- wok
- knife
- tongs
- strainer
- spoon
- chopsticks

## Tips

- In a Chinese kitchen, as long as you have the holy grail of vegetables and your essential seasonings, you can really make anything into something.
- This dish is one of the many meals my mum could just whip up in like 20 minutes.

## Source

- Original video: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8BbB2kp/
- Recipe page: https://www.cliprecipe.com/recipe/011bf03d-8f89-4c76-a549-7ad98f2c3ba8
- Extracted: 2025-08-29

Extracted from the video by Clip Recipe (https://www.cliprecipe.com). Quantities and steps are as stated or shown in the video. Site guide for agents: https://www.cliprecipe.com/llms.txt