02/18/2020
The three cups in the dish’s name refer to the three equal proportions of soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil used to make the sauce. These ingredients tend to be common among Chinese kitchens. The sauce is cooked with pieces of chicken, and the dish is usually served in a small iron pot.
In modern recipes, ginger, garlic, sugar, basil, and other ingredients are commonly added to make the sauce more flavorful, and almost none retain the three equal cups formula, as it makes for an oily, greasy, unappetizing dish. Many chefs use different proportions of different ingredients which leads to some variation between recipes. There’s a lot of room for creativity and modifying the recipe to your liking. In the end, you’re left with a tasty golden-brown chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces, served with a salty, spicy sauce that creates an aroma of flavor around the dish.
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There are many stories and legends about how the delicious dish was invented.
For example, there’s also a legend that the dish was invented in the 13th century, when Wen Tianxiang, a hero of the Song Dynasty, was captured by enemy armies. An old man who admired Wen visited his prison and gifted him with chicken and wine. He is said to have asked the guard to make a dish for him out of the ingredients. The guard used some of the other limited resources available in the kitchen to make this dish for him the night before his ex*****on.
There’s also another story about how the dish was created accidentally. It claims that peasant cooks accidentally left the pot simmering on the stove for too long, however, the overcooked meal turned out to be pretty delicious, and thus the dish was born.
Regardless of how it was invented, the combination of tender chicken, soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, basil, and garlic is what makes this classic Taiwanese dish tasty and appetizing!
