Love a Chinese takeaway? This peanut chicken recipe is better!

A quick and tasty midweek dinner. Swap the Shaoxing wine for dry sherry, if you like.

By The Good Housekeeping Cookery TeamUpdated: 15 May 2025

Gong Bao is a quick and tasty midweek dinner option. You can swap the Shaoxing wine for dry sherry, if you like and serve with fluffy rice on the side.

We’ve used whole dried chillies here to give the dish its authentic look and fiery flavour, but be warned: you’re not meant to eat them unless you’re a real chilli-head! Swap for dried chilli flakes, to taste, if you prefer.

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Yields:

4 serving(s)

Prep Time:

15 mins

Cook Time:

10 mins

Total Time:

25 mins

Cal/Serv:

308

Ingredients

1 Tbsp.
cornflour
2 Tbsp.
soy sauce
3 Tbsp.
Shaoxing wine or dry sherry
500 g
skinless chicken breasts
1 Tbsp.
vegetable oil
3
garlic cloves, crushed
5
cm piece fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1 Tbsp.
small dried bird's-eye chillies
6
spring onions, chopped
2 tsp.
sugar
Small handful skin-on peanuts
Cooked rice, to serve

Directions

1. Step 1In a bowl, mix the cornflour, soy sauce and Shaoxing wine/sherry until smooth. Add the chicken and stir to coat. Leave to marinate in the fridge for 20min, if you have time.
2. Step 2Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan over high heat. Using a slotted spoon, lift the chicken out of the marinade (reserve marinade), add to wok/pan and stir-fry until opaque, about 5min. Add garlic, ginger, chillies and most of the spring onions; fry for 2min, until fragrant.
3. Step 3Stir 3tbsp water into the reserved marinade. Add to the wok/pan along with the sugar and peanuts. Bubble for 2min. Garnish with remaining spring onions and serve with rice.

GH TIPS:

You can easily turn this recipe into a meat-free marvel. Simply replace the chicken with 450g firm tofu (cut into 2cm pieces) in its place. Don't have chicken? Use any other meat to hand - just adjust cooking times!

Want to serve it with noodles? We'd recommend flat, wide noodles for this one - it collects the sauce beautifully.

This makes a great leftover the next day and will last in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Per serving:

Calories: 308
Protein: 40g
Fat: 11g
Saturates: 2g
Carbs: 11g
Sugars: 6g
Fibre: <1g

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The Good Housekeeping Cookery Team

An experienced and highly skilled team of food writers, stylists and digital content producers, the Good Housekeeping Cookery Team is a close-knit squad of food obsessives. Cookery Editor Emma Franklin is our resident chilli obsessive and barbecue expert, who spends an inordinate amount of time on holidays poking round the local supermarkets seeking out new and exciting foods. Senior Cookery Writer Alice Shields is a former pastry chef and baking fanatic who loves making bread and would have peanut butter with everything if she could. Her favourite carb is pasta, and our vibrant green spaghetti is her weeknight go-to. Lover of all things savoury, Senior Cookery Writer Grace Evans can be found eating crispy corn and nocellara olives at every opportunity, and will take the cheeseboard over dessert any time (though she cannot resist a slice of tres leches cake). With a wealth of professional kitchen know-how, culinary training and years of experience between them, they are all dedicated to ensuring every Good Housekeeping recipe is the best it can be, so you can trust they’ll work (and if they don’t – we’ll have the answer for why*) every time (*90% of the time the answer is: “buy an separate oven thermometer”!).

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