Fragrant and deeply flavorful Chinese chicken stew that's super easy to put together. Tender chicken plus potatoes that absorb all the essence from the stew make this dish extra satisfying. Add some noodles and you have a simple and deliciously hearty meal!
This chicken stew is one of our family's recent favorite dish. The flavorful and comforting chicken stew is especially great for a cold winter night. Don't let the long ingredient list scare you, it's actually very quick and easy to put together. Even those without much cooking experience should be able to make this.
If you like this dish, make sure you also try my Taiwanese beef noodle soup, curried baked chicken thigsh with shallots and pressure cooker Chinese beef stew with carrots and daikon.
Why You Should Try This Recipe?
- This recipe is very easy to make, even a beginner can follow the instructions here to make something that tastes amazing.
- The ingredients are cheap and easy to gather.
- The leftovers store and reheat very well, you can easily scale this recipe up and be set for a number of meals for the next few days.
Ingredients You'll Need
Notes
- Chicken drumsticks - chicken drumsticks work very well in stews, but you can also use other parts of the chicken for this recipe (with bone and skin for better flavor).
- Spices - I use cinnamon stick, star anise and bay leaves. If you don't have cinnamon stick you can add a pinch of cinnamon powder instead.
- Dark soy sauce - mainly for color, you can skip this if you don't have it.
- Tomato paste - can be replaced with ketchup if you don't have it.
Step by Step Instructions
Step 1 - Toss chicken with salt and pepper and let it sit for 15 minutes. It will be even better if you can do this a few hours or the night before.
Step 2 - Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium low heat and cook ginger, garlic and spices for about 2 minutes until it's aromatic.
Step 3 - Add chicken drumsticks, cook for 1 minute before flipping and cooking another minute.
Step 4 - Add all the seasonings, stir and cook for 30 seconds before adding water. Bring to a boil, turn the heat to low and maintain a gentle boil for 30 minutes.
Step 5 - Add potatoes and cook for another 20 minutes or until soft, and that's it!
Serving recommendation
This chicken stew goes very well with noodles, especially with wide wheat noodles. If I have time I will make my own hand pulled noodles or hand torn noodles, otherwise I just use store bought knife-cut noodles (刀削麵) like the one shown in the picture below.
Tips and Tricks
- Using good quality chicken is the key to making this dish delicious. Try to use free range / pasture raised chicken or the best quality you can afford.
- I prefer leaving the garlic skin on when making stew to prevent the garlic from breaking apart and muddling up the broth.
- I usually serve this stew with wide wheat noodles; however, you can also enjoy it with rice. If you would like to serve it with rice, you can cook it without the lid in the last 10 minutes to reduce the broth a little bit.
Recipe FAQs
The spices give this dish a nice fragrance; however, you can omit them if you don't like the smell. It will still be tasty with the aroma from ginger, garlic and scallion.
Yes, you can use dry sherry, rice cooking wine (michiu) or sake if you don't have Shaoxing wine.
Onion, carrots and black wood ear mushrooms (pre-soak if it's dried) also go very well with the stew.
Don't Forget to Try
I would like to hear from you! If you make this recipe, please consider leaving a star rating and comment in the section further down the page. Stay in touch by following my Instagram and Pinterest!
Chinese Chicken Stew with Potatoes
Ingredients
For the Chicken Stew
- 1.5-2 lbs chicken drumstick, about 6 chicken drumsticks
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- ¼ tsp white pepper powder
- 2 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 5 slices ginger
- 5 cloves garlic, with or without peel
- 2 stalks scallion , cut into 4-5 sections
- 1 star anise
- 2 bay leaf
- 1.5 inch cinnamon stick , or a pinch of cinnamon powder
- 3 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
- 3 tablespoon soy sauce
- ½ tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 2 tablespoon sugar
- 2 cups water
- 1 lb Yukon Gold potato, peel and cut to 1-1½" cubes
Other
- 3 servings knife-cut noodle or other kinds of noodle of your choice.
- chili oil
- chopped scallion
Instructions
Marinate the Chicken
- Toss chicken drumstick with salt and white pepper powder and let it sit for 15 minutes in room temperature. If you have time, it will be even better to do this for a few hours or overnight.
Make the Stew
- Heat vegetable oil in a Dutch oven over medium low heat (I use a 4 qt one), add ginger, garlic, scallion, star anise, bay leaves and cinnamon stick. Cook and stir until aromatic and the scallions begin to brown, about 1-2 minutes.
- Adjust the heat to medium, add in chicken and cook for 1 minute before flipping and cooking another minute.
- Add Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, tomato paste and sugar. Stir and cook for about 30 seconds.
- Add water, cover and pot and bring it to a boil before turning the heat down to low and maintaining a gentle boil for 30 minutes.
- Submerge the potatoes in the stew and cook for another 20 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.
Assemble
- When the stew is almost done, cook noodles according to the instruction on the package.
- Add noodles, chicken, potatoes and broth in a bowl, drizzle some chili oil if using, top with some chopped scallion and enjoy!
Looks amazing! Will be making it shortly, thank you.
OMG thank you for this recipe! It came out so good! My family loved it!
Thank you! I'm so happy to hear that!! 😀
I made this and served it over noodles and it was so delicious! The potatoes are even better the next day when reheated over the stove because they absorbed all of the flavors. Definitely a recipe I'll be using again and again.
Thank you so much SLee! And yes, I also agree this dish tastes even better the next day 😀
I have this on the stove as we speak. It was delicious the first time I made it. Thanks for another great recipe!
Thank you Kim!!
I have made this recipe countless times on the stove and in the instant pot and it is truly delicious! I was wondering...I just picked up a pork shoulder on sale. Do you think that these flavors would pair well with pork to make pork stew? Or do you think the Chinese style beef stew recipe would be more suitable? Or something else entirely? 😀
Hi Kim, I think it will work just fine with pork, I remember my mom used to make pork stew with similar flavor profile, and she will add carrots in it.
Thank you for the recipe. It is very easy to prepare and tastes amazing. My husband loves this so much. This is now one of my regular dishes.
Thank you Jane! I'm so happy to hear that 🙂 This is also one of my husband's favorite dish!
Oops, you forgot to add when to add sugar!
Ahh, thank you so much Karen! I just edited it 🙂
Yum! Did this in the instant pot for 13 min, literally just threw all the ingredients in and it turned out perfectly! i dont think im much of a cinnamon person so probably wont add that next time, but everything else about this is lovely.
Thank you for the tip of IP cooking instruction, Audrey! I'm glad you enjoy this recipe 🙂
Highly impressive recipe! We cooked it last night for 10 mins (frying the chicken and spices separately) and powered on the ‘keep warm’ mode on our pressure cooker for breakfast this morning. Everything in the recipe was used as it is (with a fresh chicken from the market) and we had it with that recommended ‘刀削面’ and a dash of the bottled chilli oil ‘川南油辣子’ from Sichuan province,China. It tasted simply awesome! Thank you so much for the recipe, Ms Edwina!
Thank you Deon for providing the cooking instruction of using Instant Pot! I'm so happy to hear you enjoy this recipe 🙂
this is delicious. Did change up a couple of things. Like star anise but not the cinnamon so left that out. And I used the Shaoxing wine to deglaze the pan. I prefer to burn it off to make the taste less raw. Cut the sugar in ½ and used chicken thighs rather than drumsticks. it was voted "make again"
Thanks Lesley!