Add 3 Bottles to Your Pantry For Infinite Stir-Fries, Braises & Soups

Come January, there’s a lot of talk about upending our pantries and tossing everything. But for an intensely savory and toasty sauce that’s also weeknight- (and budget-) friendly, you’ll want to keep—or (gasp!) buy—toasted sesame oil, light soy sauce, and rice or Shaoxing wine. Three bottles! That’s it.

Oh, but add some garlic, ginger, and basil and you’ll be well on your way to three-cup ramen, or tofu, or squash, or broccoli, or—the ultimate in fast and flavorful weeknight cooking—three-cup chicken, a.k.a. sanbeiji, a popular Taiwanese dish with roots in southern China.

Three Cup Chicken
Three Cup Chicken
by Alexandra Stafford

As Sam Sifton explains in a June 2015 The New York Times Magazine story, the mythology of three-cup chicken dates back over seven-hundred years, to the execution of Song dynasty hero Wen Tianxiang in the thirteenth century. On the final night of Wen’s life, a sympathetic guard made him a dish out of the prison’s limited provisions: pieces of chicken braised in sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine.

“One cup of each,” says Sifton, before going on to explain that, while family recipes in Taiwan vary, few people make sanbeiji according to the 1 cup : 1 cup : 1 cup legend. (For you, that means you can put those bottles you’ve invested in toward multiple meals.)

Rather than being a set of instructions to be taken literally, the recipe’s name “might underscore the fact that most recipes were passed orally in Taiwan, rather than written, until recent generations,” Cathy Erway, author of The Food of Taiwan, wrote on The Splendid Table.

The makings of three-cup tofu and ramen.
The makings of three-cup tofu and ramen.
Photo by Bobbi Lin

Because “if you actually cook it that way,” Taiwanese-American chef Eddie Huang warned Sifton, “you’ll be in trouble” (or, at least, find yourself with a dish greasy and unappetizing). “The point is to draw the sugar out of all the ingredients using a little sesame oil, but not a lot,” advises Huang.

Sifton’s recipe calls for 3 tablespoons toasted sesame oil, 1/4 cup light soy sauce, and 1/2 cup rice wine, accordingly. And, as Erway stresses, it’s actually “the sheer volume of garlic cloves, thick pieces of ginger, and fresh basil leaves” that gives the dish its signature flavor—though her recipe actually does come closer to the 1:1:1 ratio than does Sifton’s, calling for 3/4 cup toasted sesame oil, 1 cup light soy sauce, and 1 cup rice wine.

San Bei (Taiwanese Three Cup) Tofu and Ramen
San Bei (Taiwanese Three Cup) Tofu and Ramen
by Joy Huang | The Cooking of Joy

And it’s not just chicken that can handle the three-cup treatment. Try the three-cup flavor combination as the base of a soup, a braise, or a stir-fry.

Three Cup Chicken
Three Cup Chicken
by Alexandra Stafford
San Bei (Taiwanese Three Cup) Tofu and Ramen
San Bei (Taiwanese Three Cup) Tofu and Ramen
by Joy Huang | The Cooking of Joy

What bottles and cans will you be adding to your pantry in 2018? Tell us in the comments below.

This article was originally published in early 2017. We’re bringing it back to ring in 2018.


(via Food52)

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