Chinese Chicken and Gravy

Select your favorite product with a minimum 5 ingredients, list the ingredients, method of preparation and functionality of 4 ingredients mentioned in the recipe. Make sure to write 4-5 sentences per ingredient. Mention what will you change in the recipe to make it marketable as per the existing food trends.

Our groups favorite product was the Chinese chicken and gravy. This dish calls for large quantities of rice, chicken, onion flour and vegetable oil with an intermediate amount of soy sauce, butter, salt and garlic. The ingredients in the smallest quantities were cornstarch, vinegar, sugar, black pepper and ginger root. To prepare this dish we had to cut up roughly a pound of boneless chicken breast into bite size pieces and coat it in flour. After frying the meat, until reaching an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit, we then added cornstarch, salt and black pepper, and soy sauce. For the gravy we added vegetable oil and butter into a skillet first then came the dry red chili peppers. After that we added in the chopped ginger and garlic. We sautéed it for a minute then threw in the chopped onion. From there we added barbecue sauce to give it that American twist, ketchup, soy sauce, green chili sauce, vinegar, salt, sugar, black pepper, cornstarch and water at the end as needed to thin it out just enough to bring it to a boil. We then added the fried chicken pieces and let it simmer for a few minutes. After that we mixed some cornstarch with water and added it along with one final stir. We served this dish on a bed of white steamed rice. Adding rice to the final product is an example of retrogradation. This is the process by which a gel bonds to itself upon cooling. When we heated the rice with steam, the gelled starch broke the bonds to other starch molecules, and gave the rice its fluffiness texture. The next functionality method we observed was the dehydration of the surface of the chicken after coating it with flour and frying it. Dehydration is defined as the removal of water. This caused the gravy which is water based to bind to the pieces of chicken. This ensured that the gravy coated the pieces evenly when mixed. Next we come to the caramelization of onions. In this step we observed a browning in which chemical compounds are broken down by heat. When caramelizing onions, pyrolysis, or the decomposition brought about by high temperatures, is responsible for breaking down sugars, meaning that the high heat applied to the onions during cooking in the skillet causes the sugars to break down into smaller units. This is what makes the onion softer and taste sweeter. Finally we have the change in viscosity when adding cornstarch to the gravy. When adding corn starch we are essentially adding amylose and amylopectin which partake in hydrogen bonding and this is what causes the gravy to change in consistency and become more thick and sticky. As mentioned in the ingredients list, we added a mild flavored barbecue sauce which gives this traditional Chinese dish an American twist which will make it unique causing it to be more marketable.

Works Cited:

Brimm, C. 2011. Cooking with Chemistry: What is Caramelization? Common Sense Science.

Available at https://commonsensescience.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/cooking-with-chemistry-what-is-caramelization/ (verified 21 November 2016).

Das, R., D. P. Pawar, and V. K. Modi. 2013. Quality characteristics of battered and fried chicken: comparison of pressure frying and conventional frying. Journal of Food Science and Technology.

Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3550924/ (verified 21 November 2016).

Hegenbart, S. (Ed). 1996. Understanding Starch Functionality. Natural Products INSIDER.

Available at http://www.naturalproductsinsider.com/articles/1996/01/understanding-starch-functionality.aspx (verified 21 November 2016).