Chinese Chop suey

Cuisine: Chinese

Cook Time: 40 Minutes

Serves: 8

Chinese Chop Suey is a must-try dish for all foodies. It is a celebrated American Chinese delicacy, full of original flavors. The dish has regained its scrumptious position in American culture in recent times. It’s easy to cook and can be a wholesome meal in itself.

400g of boneless chicken thighs
5 asparagus
A medium-sized carrot, thinly sliced
A baby corn
4-6 mushrooms (shiitake)
Handful of sprouts

For Marinade:

3 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of sesame oil
1 and 1/2 tbsp of cornflour
Veg stock

For Sauce:

2 tbsp of soy sauce
2 tbsp of oyster sauce
Fresh pepper
Salt and pepper
Sesame oil
Chinese rice wine

All for Wholesome Chinese Chop Suey!

Here are the easy steps to follow:

Blanch the carrot and the sprouts in the vegetable stock for 15-30 sec. Drain the whole stock. Take approximately 1 tbsp of oil and heat it till it becomes smoking hot. Now add mushroom and stir and fry it for 1 min. Add asparagus and baby corn. Then cover it with mushrooms and add a spoon of stock. Now stir and fry it.
Again, bring wok to the smoking point. Now add chicken to it and stir for 3-5 mins until it becomes golden brown.
Now reduce the gas to medium, add vegetables to the wok/sauce and fry them for 2 minutes. Add sauce to it and stir-fry on medium-high heat for 2 minutes so that the sauce is thickened and is penetrating the freshly cooked chicken.

Chef Tip: Always cook the chicken on high heat and the vegetables on medium heat.

Chinese Chop Suey has become a popular American food over time. It is easy to make - minimum efforts required. You can serve it over rice or crispy noodles. It can also be used as a staple.

Quick Bites

Fun Fact

• Legend has it that in the year 1849, a bunch of big drunken miners barged into a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco late night and demanded for food.

• The exhausted chef scraped old food off of previous customers’ plates and doused it in soya sauce and presented it to his not-so-nice customers.

Historical Fact

• It is widely believed that chop suey was invented by Cantonese-American immigrants in the late 1800s. Anthropologist E.N. Anderson who has specialised in Chinese food suggests that chop suey originating from “tsap seui” meaning “miscellaneous leftovers” and was common in Taishan which is a city in China, from where early Chinese migrated to USA.

• Another tale says when Li Hongzhang , a diplomat of Qing Dynasty, visited the United States in 1896, his chef tried to make a dish suitable for both Americans and Indians and prepared chop suey.

Nutrition Fact

• A 200g serving of chop suey has 102 calories of which 48.1 is from fat. It contains 5.3g of fat, 26.1g of cholesterol, 305.6g of sodium, 4g of carbohydrate and 9.2g of protein.

• The wheat noodles used in chop suey is a great source of energy as it contains high amounts of carbohydrates, it is rich in vitamin B and essential minerals.