Three Cup Chicken Recipe (Taiwanese Style)

Three Cup Chicken is a very popular and tasty Taiwanese dish that you'll definitely find at any Taiwanese restaurants. To make this dish at home, it's downright simple and easy.

After moving to Australia, I’ve been very lucky to have many chances to try some Taiwanese foods because many Taiwanese run their gorgeous restaurants here. Nearly all the Taiwanese restaurants would have one of their famous dishes called “Three Cup Chicken” (三杯雞) on their menus.

At first, the name of the dish caught my sight and aroused my curiosity. “Three cups”? Ha, interesting! What is the "three cup sauce"? Many of my Taiwanese friends know this dish of course.

Again, I was lucky enough to get the recipe and tried it at home.

“Three cup sauce” actually includes rice wine, sesame oil and soy sauce in the proportion of 1:1:1 Adding basil into the stewed chicken is a must and make this dish very unique in taste and smell. The sauce is perfectly balanced and the basil makes the chicken irresistible. Similar to what people say, “Love at first sight”, yet I fell in “love at first taste”.

Three Cup Chicken Recipe Recipe

(Printable recipe)
By Christine’s Recipes
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Yield: 2 to 3 serves

Ingredients:

• 650 gm (whole or half) fresh chicken 
• 1 cup fresh Taiwanese basil (九層塔)
• 1 shallot, sliced
• 5 braids garlic, chopped
• 1 thumb-sized ginger, sliced or smashed

Sauce:

• 2 Tbsp light soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp dark soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp rock sugar (冰糖), chopped smaller
• 2 Tbsp cooking rice wine
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 3/4 cup water

Taiwanese basil (九層塔)

Method:

1. Rinse and drain chicken, then cut into chunks.
2. Heat 2 tablespoon oil to sauté ginger, garlic and shallots until fragrant. Add in chicken chunks and continue to sauté. When the chicken turns white in color, pour in the sauce ingredients and cook on high heat, bring it to boil. Cover with a lid, lower heat. Cook ingredients for about 30 to 40 minutes till tender and done.
3. When sauce begins to thicken, turn off the heat and add basil. Stir well. Dish up to serve.

Notes：

• Rock sugar is pure sugar cane in lumps, available at Asian grocers. Or you can order from Amazon. It will work like a charm balancing all the flavours of soy sauce and make the sauce look a bit glossy.