Chicken in Black Pepper Sauce @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I love Asian food, though for a while, I could not eat it in restaurants because of the high sodium content. I sometimes try these dishes at home, though it’s hard to replicate what the Asian restaurants produce. This recipe started as black pepper beef on Norecipes.com, but as usual, tweaks were made! 

Ingredients 

1 lb. Chicken tenders, cut into squares

2 teaspoons black peppercorns

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

1 tablespoon wine (I did not have any Chinese wine so I used some leftover white wine that was in the fridge)

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

1 teaspoon potato starch

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

One small to medium onion

1/2 green bell pepper

1/2 red bell pepper 

1/2 cup snow peas

1/2 cup chicken broth, optional

Crush the black peppercorns. You could use a mortar and pestle or place them in a Ziploc bag and roll with a rolling pin. I put them in our spice grinder, and that was easy as could be.

Cut the onions, green pepper, and red pepper into squares.

Whisk  together the wine, sesame oil, oyster sauce, and the black pepper. Whisk in the potato starch. Stir the chicken tenders into half of the sauce and set this aside to marinate.

Heat  the vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the chicken until browning and no longer pink. Add the onions, peppers, and snow peas and stir these together until softening and beginning to brown. Add the remaining stir fry sauce and simmer until thick. We like things saucy, so I added about a quarter cup chicken broth and let that simmer. Serve over rice.

Notes: next time I would add more vegetables, including some sliced carrots. Also, I did order potato starch, which was recommended instead of corn starch, though I did not test to see the difference between the two. We loved the black pepper taste, and think this would be delicious with the original beef, as well. The leftovers were not as good the next day for lunch, so plan to eat everything!

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