Cashew Chicken

There is a 100% chance that anyone who is in a 10-mile radius will come running into your kitchen when they smell the garlic, ginger, and soy in the sauce as it hits the pan. It’s a good moment.

Ingredients To Make Cashew Chicken

While this is somewhat of a clear-the-counters-and-put-on-your-apron kind of recipe, it doesn’t take as much effort or ingredients as you’d think.

Here’s what you need:

• Chicken
• Dry ingredients (flour, cornstarch, the usual)
• Batter (you’ll make this, but it’s easy! promise!)
• Vegetable oil for frying
• Cashews
• Sauce (soy sauce, hoisin sauce, vinegar, ginger, etc.)
• Green onions to top it off

If you really want to up the sesame flavor, you could even add a swish of toasted sesame oil too!

How To Make Cashew Chicken

First, you’ll have to put a little bit of prep work in – cube your chicken, get the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix the batter for frying, and maybe even whisk together your sauce now if you want to really make this seamless.

Then, you’re going to start making magic happen.

1. Coat your chicken in the dry ingredients and get it in the batter to coat.
2. Heat your oil in a large skillet to get it ready to fry. (You can test it by adding just a drip of batter to see if it sizzles, but if you want to be really exact, the oil should be about 350-375 degrees.)
3. Fry it up! Add half your chicken, then repeat with the other half.
4. Remove the oil and put the chicken back in the pan and add your sauce and cashews.
5. Serve that tender saucy chicken with rice and veggies (if you want). Way to go!

Deep-Fried Vs. Stir-Fried

Traditionally, there are two ways to make cashew chicken: stir-fried in a pan or wok, or deep-fried, the latter of which is happening here.

I love love love the crispy, delicious, deep-fried bits of chicken and how they cling to the sauce here, but if you want to eliminate the deep-frying of this recipe, that is an option.

What I’d do instead: skip the batter and just stir fry the chicken in a pan, and then add the sauce at the end. Easy.

HOWEVER if you are choosing to deep fry, I have a small tip for you to make it a littttttle easier: toss *all your chicken* together into the flour, then stir up *all the floured chicken* together into the batter. From there, I dump about half of it into the pan of hot oil – it’s going to stick together and feel very wrong, but you can work quickly and use two forks to break the pieces apart. And repeat with the other half batch.