20-Minute Sesame Chicken Recipe

Sesame chicken is practically synonymous with Chinese takeout in the United States. While many Americans think of it as the quintessential Chinese food, sesame chicken is really more of an American dish than anything else. In fact, it's so American that you would be extremely hard-pressed to find a plate of sesame chicken anywhere in China. What we know as the standard takeout order is most likely a cousin of la zi ji, also known as Mala Chicken, a much spicier dish that hails from the Sichuan province in central China. 

Chinese food in America has its own vibrant history. If you want to dive deeper into the origins of your favorite takeout dishes, we recommend watching The Search For General Tso, a drool-worthy documentary about the history Chinese takeout in the United States. In fact, this recipe for 20-minute sesame chicken is perhaps best eaten while watching the film, for a homestyle dinner and a movie that's as delicious as it is educational. 

At most Chinese restaurants, sesame chicken is the milder sibling to General Tso's chicken, which tends to have a bit more spice and is more similar to Mala Chicken — though it's still nowhere near as spicy as the original Sichuan dish. Many restaurants use an egg and rice flour or cornstarch coating before deep-frying to make their sesame chicken extra crispy, but let's be honest: deep frying is not exactly quick or easy in a standard home kitchen. We've created a recipe that is just as delicious as takeout, but skips the deep-frying and comes together in just 20 minutes, start to finish. 

A lot of home cooks struggle with making rice, but there are a few things you can do to ensure that you can have perfect, fluffy rice that's even better than the stuff you get at a restaurant. First, if you cook rice often and don't already have a rice cooker, it will make your life much easier! You can always make rice on the stovetop, but using a rice cooker takes the guesswork out of the process. If you have an Instant Pot, you can also use that to make your rice. 

No matter how you decide to cook your rice, there's one crucial step you should never skip: rinsing. According to Nik Sharma over at Food52, it's a step you should never skip. Rice is very starchy, and if you don't rinse uncooked rice before starting the cooking process, the excess starch will make result in gummy rice that's stuck together. 

There are a few ways to rinse rice. You can put it in a colander or mesh strainer and hold it under running water for a minute or two. You can also put it directly in the pot or bowl you're going to cook it in, cover it with water, swish it vigorously with your hands, pour out the water, and repeat until the water runs clear. 

Deep-frying is always a surefire way to get extremely crispy chicken, but deep fat frying can also be messy, time-consuming, and prone to unexpected issues like undercooked meat or meat that's too greasy. We've decided to skip this step in our recipe and instead do a shallow pan-fry that cuts down on prep, cook time, and cleanup — and it's a tiny bit healthier, too. 

So, how do we get our chicken super crispy? By using a coating made from rice flour and corn starch. If you can't find rice flour, you can skip it and just use corn starch, but the combination of these two ingredients will yield a light, crisp coating to your pan-fried chicken that also helps to thicken the sauce once it's added to the pan. If you want to amp up the flavor of your 20-minute sesame chicken, you can also add dried spices directly to this flour mixture. Garlic powder, back pepper, and Chinese five-spice are all great options. 

To get the best results for this 20-minute sesame chicken recipe, be sure to pan-fry your chicken before you add the sauce. Shallow-frying uses less oil than deep fat frying, so you don't have to go through the extra step of draining the fried chicken pieces and disposing of the hot oil before moving on to the sauce. To pan-fry, heat about a quarter-cup of olive oil or another neutral cooking oil in a frying pan. While the oil starts to get hot, coat your chicken pieces in the cornstarch and rice flour mixture. Test the heat level by dropping one piece of chicken into the oil: if it sizzles and sputters when it touches the oil, then you know your pan is hot enough. If it doesn't, wait until that piece starts to sizzle before adding the rest of the chicken to your pan. It's important to make sure that your oil is at the right temperature, because if you add all of the chicken to a pan that's still too cold, you'll end up with heavy, greasy chicken instead of light, crisp chicken. 

Honestly, our 20-minute sesame chicken recipe is just as good if not a little bit better than what you'd get from most takeout restaurants. Since our chicken is pan-friend and not deep-fried, you get more chicken and less breading in every bite, which is probably our favorite aspect of this recipe. As will all homemade food, we also love that our recipe can be customized to suit your family's tastes. Few recipes ever need to be followed exactly as written, and this one is no exception. You can make it spicier or sweeter as you prefer. Hate oranges? Leave out the orange juice! Want it sweeter? Add a little more sugar. The more you cook at home, the more you'll learn what you really like to eat, and how to create those flavors in your own kitchen instead of relying on someone else to do it for you.