San Bei Ji 三杯雞

San Bei Ji literally translates to “three cups chicken“. While there are variants on the dish, three cups typically refers to 1 cup each of sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine. This is one of those dishes that you definitely will not find in “Americanized” Chinese restaurants (I’ll save that rant for later) – it is a strongly flavored, almost pungent dish. Honestly, I have not found it in too many traditional Chinese restaurants in the Atlanta area either. While it is a mainland Chinese dish, it is very popular in Taiwan.

What is unique about this dish is the overload of flavor components in the dish – in addition to the three strongly flavored liquids, the dish includes copious amounts of garlic, basil, scallions and pepper. The real key, however is that during the cooking process, the liquid is reduced almost completely, concentrating the flavors even more.

Two of the three cups: soy & shaoxing rice wine

Chicken ( ji ), and the garlic (2 heads), ginger and serrano pepper

the finished dish

No, the recipe is not included yet. I want to make some refinements to my recipe, but as you can see from my previous post, I’m having some stove issues. However, I just bought a batch of basil and I’ve got a whole chicken waiting, so updates should be soon.