This steamed chicken with black bean sauce (蒜蓉豉汁蒸滑鸡) is a comforting home-cooked recipe that’s super simple, yet flavorful, and produces lots of sauce to pour over steamed rice.Serve with your favorite vegetable side for a completely awesome and hearty meal the whole family can agree on!  We were actually hoping to include this dish in our cookbook, but when we had to cut out 20 recipes due to page constraints, it ended up on the cutting room floor.Almost a year out from the book’s publication, we’re happy to finally be able to share it with you.  Photo credit: Christine Han What is Waat?  If you haven’t made any of our Cantonese-style steamed chicken recipes, you have yet to experience a texture known in Cantonese cuisine as waat, which is often applied to chicken, as in waat gai (滑鸡).

The word translates roughly to “slippery.”  Basically, when you take velveted chicken and steam it, it has this smooth, tender, juicy—and yes, slippery—mouthfeel and eating experience that you have to experience firsthand to fully appreciate.  Some of our other recipes that have this texture include:  Steamed Chicken with Mushrooms & Lily Flowers  Steamed Chicken with Lap Cheong (Chinese Sausage) Chicken & Mushroom Clay Pot Rice This version uses fermented black beans and garlic, and I think it’s one of the tastiest! Veggie Sides to Serve with This Chicken    I know many readers like to mix in some vegetables with a pure protein dish li

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