- Are you feeling all right, George? - Yeah, fine. - You look a little warm. - It's the chicken. - You're a terrible liar, George. Look at you, you're a wreck. You're sweating bullets. - It's the Kung Pao. George likes his chicken spicy. (TV audience laughing) - [Narrator] Hey, what's up, guys? Welcome back to "Binging with Babish." For this week, we're taking a look at the Kung Pao chicken from "Seinfeld," a dish that, as you can see, contains myriad spicy and
flavorful ingredients, so it should be pretty good. We're starting off by combining one tablespoon Shaoxing vinegar, two tablespoons black vinegar, one and a half tablespoons of soy sauce, one teaspoon chicken bullion powder, and one tablespoon chili
bean paste in a small bowl. In a separate and even smaller bowl, we're combining one and a half tablespoons of granulated sugar, two
teaspoons of cornstarch, and a half teaspoon of kosher salt, whisking that into the liquids
to make Kung Pao sauce. Now, this is the point we're
gonna start to screw up. We're gonna break down two chicken breasts into way too large one-inch
chunks, which we're gonna briefly marinate in one egg white mixed with one tablespoon of water. As we add the chicken
and massage thoroughly with gloved hands, we want to form a sort of thick pasty goo on
the outside of the chicken. Once things are sufficiently gooey, we're going to add two
tablespoons of dark soy sauce, two teaspoons each sesame
oil and cornstarch, as well as a quarter
teaspoon of kosher salt, come on, get out of there, and a quarter teaspoon
of ground white pepper. Massage this together until
it's even gooier still, then let it sit around at room temperature to marinate for about 20 minutes. Next up we're de-seeding
our Tien Tsin peppers. Oop, what the hell- The operation and safety of this battery can not be guaranteed? Yeah, continue use. Think I care about battery safety? Nerd. I do however care about
ocular and penile safety, so I'm wearing gloves,
because whether you use Tien Tsin, chili Japonese,
or Chiles di arbol, these guys are spicy. Next up, we're incorrectly slicing far too few scallions far too thinly, and finally chopping four cloves of garlic and a one-inch segment of fresh ginger. Now the mistakes you're
gonna have made so far have been minor enough,
but they're about to get a whole lot worse,
because we're headed over to the stove top where we're
heating half a cup of oil over high heat in a large
wok, swirling it around until it smokes, which is
gonna help season our pan once we've poured off the oil. Now we're going to start by frying too few peanuts into little oil, about a third of a cup of
peanuts into a half cup of oil. We're also going to take
care to overcook them because they brown quite quickly, and continue browning once
they're out of the oil. So once they're just
a little bit too dark, we're gonna strain the now
acrid oil from the peanuts. Make sure you shake off every last drop and add it back to the pen. Then in this too little
oil, we're gonna toast, you guessed it, not enough
Sichuan peppercorns, about a quarter cup. We're toasting those
for one to three minutes until they've slightly
darkened and are fragrant, and once again, straining out the oil, which by now has not only
reduced by more than half, but is thoroughly bitter. We're adding that back to the pan and frying the chicken in it. Now there should be more like two cups of oil in this pan right now, so you're gonna end up with a kind of pasty, pallid pile of
poultry that we're gonna dump our chopped chilies on,
letting those toast up with the chicken as we frantically hope that our dish's appearance will improve. Next up, we're adding
our too few scallions and our ginger too early,
sauteing for about two minutes to try to darken up the chicken
before adding the garlic, sauteing for an additional 30 seconds, and then mercifully, we're
gonna add the Kung Pao sauce, which, because we wimped
out about the heat and fried our chicken in
too cold and too little oil, is going to have this kind
of eggy coagulant in it. Now we're adding our lightly
burned peanuts back to the pen, mixing everybody together and serving up our gooey, eggy, Kung Pao chicken stew. Now at first you're gonna lie to yourself and say, "Maybe it's not so bad," and then you're gonna remember
that you host a cooking show and you can't put out
stupid, bad information. So you're going to watch a
video or two and start over, this time using more
peanuts, more scallions and more Sichuan peppercorns. After once again pre-seasoning our pan, we're going to start with
the correct amount of oil, between one and a half to two cups, heated to almost smoking,
in which we're gonna fry our peanuts for
about one to two minutes. Then for some reason, we're
gonna try fishing them out using a spider, which causes
them to once again burn. After picking out the really dark peanuts, we're gonna soldier on,
adding our marinated, still too large chicken to
the now correct amount of oil, frying for about one minute
until pale but not pasty, this time fishing out with
our spider and setting aside. Then we're frying our
insufficient third of a cup of Sichuan peppercorns
for one to two minutes, ditching our spider idea and going back to the old reliable dump and strain. Then we're going to add
a little bit too much oil back to the pot, about
three quarters of a cup, our not enough scallions, our
not nearly enough chilies, and fry those guys together
for about one minute or until soft. Then we're adding the garlic and ginger, sauteing for 30 seconds, adding
the chicken back to the pan, and remember this is too much
oil, the heat's way too low, and we're gonna add our
Kung Pao sauce too late. So instead of Kung Pao stew, we're gonna end up with Kung Pao soup. We're gonna try to dress that up by putting it over some white rice. You're gonna want to
tell yourself that people won't notice the super
burnt peanuts and thin sauce poured over pale chicken
because it's the night before the episode comes out
and let's face facts, you're tired and a little desperate, but then you're gonna remind yourself that you procrastinated
your way through high school because you said that you
worked well under pressure. On some level, you're gonna know that you're lying to yourself
because you're trying to compensate for your poor work habits, but as usual, you're going
to push down the bad thoughts and soldier forward, cutting
your chicken in smaller pieces, chopping up more chilies and
bigger chunks of scallion, and better preparing your ingredients so you can dump and go, and this time, in the immortal final
words of Larry David, I have a system. I've got to find mesh strainer
set in a wide, deep saucepan right next to the wok,
so I can more easily strain everything as it's being cooked, more easily return the oil back to the pan and more easily keep things super hot, because that was something I was kind of a wimp about the first time. Almost every stage of
cooking in this recipe should be no longer than 30 seconds, and the entire thing should come together in about two minutes. So I'm adding the chicken
to our two cups of oil and frying for about 30 seconds, before straining into my waiting pot and returning about a half a
cup of the oil back to the pan. Into this oil, I'm adding
my scallions and chilies, sauteing with confidence over maximum heat for about 30 seconds. there's gonna be smoke,
it's gonna be scary, but just soldier forward. Don't be afraid to add a splash more oil, and remember that every
element that you add to the pan cools it down. So next, we're gonna add
our garlic and ginger and saute for no more than
30 seconds, add our chicken, and then immediately
add our Kung Pao sauce. Last but not least, add the peanuts, everything still blasting
over super high heat, and cook for about 30 seconds,
darkening with more soy sauce and/or bean paste if
you want a darker color. And there you have it, folks. Third time's the charm. The best Kung Pao chicken I've ever had. The chicken's juicy, the
vegetables are tender crisp. the peanuts are crunchy and it
is super flavorful and spicy. So although George might be my favorite character on "Seinfeld," I think the lesson here
is don't be like George. Mistakes don't have to be losses. They can be learning opportunities. Then again, I don't know what you learn from accidentally killing your
fiance with poison envelopes. (upbeat music)
