Spicy, sweet, savoury firecracker chicken stir fry loaded with tender chicken breast and colourful crisp vegetables. Quick and easy dinner for busy weeknights in 20 minutes!
What is Firecracker Chicken?
There are few famous firecracker chicken recipes, like Panda Express, Singapore Style, and Wagamama recipe.
This recipe is inspired by the Wagamama Firecracker chicken stir fry which is very popular in UK and their worldwide branches. You can find it on the menu of most Wagamama restaurants. If you like spicy-sweet chicken stir-fries you will definitely love this recipe. You don't need any special ingredients to make this mouthwatering dish, you can simply try making it at home with pantry-friendly ingredients.
Firecracker Chicken Stir Fry
As this recipe is a fast stir fry, everything cook very quick. So it is best to prepare all ingredients before cooking start.
Chicken
Chicken breast is commonly used in most restaurants stir fry dishes. But you can use chicken breast, thigh, prawns/shrimp, seafood, or any tender meat cut for this recipe. If you wish to make with beef, use tender steak cut like ribeye, rump, sirloin steak, etc. Chicken seasonings is very simple, you can just add a couple of teaspoons of sauce mix and set aside for a few minutes. If you have more time, you can leave it for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
Vegetables
I've made this dish with vegetables that are mostly used in this recipe - Snow peas, bell pepper, sweet onions and spring onions. Feel free to add any of stir-fry vegetables, you wish! Crisp, fresh, colourful vegetables are very appetizing and inviting, that you will get really hungry while you are cooking.
How to Make the Sauce
Sauce is the king of this dish, the combination of sweet, spicy and sour, and savoury flavors. Similar to most Chinese and Thai stir fry sauces. You can simply mix sweet chilli sauce, hot chilli sauce or sriracha, oyster sauce, light soy sauce, honey, sesame oil, and white pepper. Might look like you need loads of sauces to mix. But you will be amazed by how delicious the sauce mixture turns out!
You can add this sauce in different varieties of stir-fry dishes and can make adjustments according to your taste. You can make extra sauce and store in air-right container for future use. It last in fridge for 4-5 days.
Can I make the chicken crispy?
If you are a crispy chicken fan, you can make crispy coated chicken instead of stir fry chicken breast and vegetables. Here is the way how to make it :
- Cut the chicken into medium bite-size pieces, season with a tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil, 1 teaspoon of corn starch, and a quarter teaspoon of baking soda. Let it sit for 15 minutes
- Coat the marinated chicken pieces with corn starch or potato starch, tap the excess flour out before frying.
- Fry with vegetable oil for 350F for 2-3 minutes until crispy, remove from oil. and set aside.
- Heat the wok/pan and drizzle a bit of oil, add dry red chilli and stir for few seconds, and follow with the chilli flakes, stir for few seconds.
- Pour the sauce mixture in and as soon as the sauce start to thicken, add the vegetables and chicken back in. Toss well to combine all ingredients evenly.
- Ready to serve with hot steamed rice or fried rice in the middle.
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More of our family's favourite stir fry chicken recipes you can try :
Firecracker Chicken
Ingredients
- 350 grams (12.5 oz) Chicken Breast
- 6-7 Snow Peas (mangetout/sugar peas)
- ½ Sweet Onion ( cut thin slices )
- ½ Red Bell Pepper ( cut thin slices )
- 2 Spring onions ( cut thin slices )
- 1 Chilli ( sliced ) optional
- 4 Dried long red chilli ( deseeded ) optional
- 1 tsp Chilli flakes
- 2 tbsp Vegetable oil
Sauce Mixture
- 2 tbsp Sweet chilli sauce ( See details in note )
- 2 tbsp Sriracha sauce Or Hot chilli sauce ( details in note )
- 2 tbsp Honey
- 1 tbsp Oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp Light soy sauce
- 1 tsp Sesame oil
- ¼ tsp White pepper powder
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar/ water
To Serve
- Cooked rice for two
- Japanese Shichimi chilli powder ( see details in note )
- Lime Wedges
- Toasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- First add all the sauce ingredients in the mixing bowl, mix well and set aside.
- Cut the chicken breast into thin slices, place in a large bowl, add 2 teaspoon of stir fry sauce mixture in the chicken. Mix well and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.
- Prepare all the vegetables before you start frying and set aside.
- Heat a large wok or pan over medium-high heat, drizzle 2 tablespoon of vegetable oil.
- Fry the chicken slices for 2-3 minutes until almost cooked, then push to one side of pan and add the dry red chillies and stir for few seconds. Follow with the chilli flakes and continue stir for few seconds.
- Add the onion slices, bell pepper slices and snow peas in. Stir fry for another 1 minute.
- Turn the heat over high heat and pour the sauce mixture in. Toss well to combine the sauce and all ingredients evenly for 1-2 minutes.Add the spring onions and remove from heat.
- To serve, add the hot cooked rice in a small bowl, press down gently with a spatula and fill the rice bowl. Place the serving plate over the rice bowl, flip the bowl over the plate and tap the rice gently out. Add the firecracker chicken around the rice. Garnish with Japanese Shichimi chilli powder and lime wedge over the rice. Serve immediately!
Notes
- Sriracha Sauce - Sriracha is a Thai style spicy hot chilli sauce, if you don't have Sriracha sauce in hand, you can substitute with any hot chilli sauce available.
- Sweet Chilli Sauce - I used Mae Ploy sweet chilli sauce in most of my recipes, any Thai sweet chilli sauce or Chinese sweet chilli sauce do well for this recipe.
- Shichimi chilli powder - Shichimi is a Japanese chilli powder also known as Shichimi Togarashi, a powder mixture of 7 spices. Which includes Japanese chilli peppers, orange peel, toasted sesame seeds, ginger, and seaweed. Sprinkling a few dashes of Shichimi creates an aromatic, fiery flavour to the cuisine. You can buy it in Japanese or Oriental supermarkets and Amazon online.
Jane says
Gave this a try, even though it was a little too hot for our taste we still enjoyed it. Next time i will leave out the chilli flakes and dried chilli as i think the heat in the sriracha sauce will be enough for us. I didnt have snow peas on hand so added carrot, bok choy and mushrooms.