The soy sauce amount for this recipe was reduced by the Allrecipes staff on 7/29/2009 at the submitter's request.
Recently I ate some chicken with basil at a local Taiwanese restaurant and wanted to recreate it at home. I found this recipe and tried it. The result was definitely was very close to what I ate and easy to boot. I've made the recipe twice once with sherry and the other time without it (substituting chinese cooking wine instead) and have found it to be more or less the same. The sherry just makes it a little bit more sweet. Also since I couldn't get my hands on Thai basil leaves or whole red chilies I used regular basil and 2 jalapeno peppers instead. Finally I cut down on the soy sauce a bit wary of other reviewers who said the dish was too salty. All in all I enthusiastically recommend this recipe.
I make this dish all the time and I never get tired of it. I was about to share it myself but you beat me to it:D (traditionally... rice wine is used instead of sherry but it's not that big of a difference)
This is a pretty good recipe. Like others I've made a few modifications of my own: 1) reduced the amount of soy sauce to just 1/4 cup 2) substituted the dry sherry with Chinese cooking wine 3) reduced amount of sesame oil to just 3 tablespoons and 4) added a full cup of basil leaves.
I tried this chicken in Taiwanese restaurant before therefore I decided to DIY it at home. By using this recipe the cooking result is better than what we get locally. I put in 50g of Thai basir leaf it really give the dish a slight peppery kick. Home grown basil leaf is always taste the best and it can be grown effortlessly by sticking stem into soil. Lisa
It's pretty good if you don't have an Asian market nearby but I recently found another recipe I like better which uses grated ginger shaoxing wine instead of sherry a small amount of dark sesame oil (for flavor) in addition to the light and a darker thicker soy sauce called kecap manis.
Very good. I salted the chicken prior to browning and omitted the water and chilies. I did add some red pepper flakes but not too much because of my two young children. I think it would have been even better if I'd had Thai sweet basil rather then regular but I used what I had.
I had actually had this dish at a Tiwanese restaurant in Milian Italy and loved it. When making it at home I mixed some five spice powder with some flour and dredged the chicken in it before adding it to the skillet to make it a bit crisper on the outside. I also used a lot of sliced ginger.
I really wanted to love this. I love chicken soy sauce sesame oil (2T) ginger garlic basil sherry. Why wouldn't I?!... I don't know either.:( It was salty - & not very flavorful. The directions are funky too. Instead I sauteed the garlic a bit browned the chicken then added the sauce ingredients. No way was that going to reduce in twenty minutes & it was salty before reduction. That adding the quarter cup of water? So it takes longer to reduce I guess. I'll play with the leftovers but I think the recipe needs major changes to be good.
This did not work out for me at all. The sauce and chicken I was able to salvage and use in a House Fried Rice recipe from this site. That was the only good thing for me about this recipe. Otherwise I would have been upset about the loss of good ingredients. I won't make this again.
