Chicken & Poultry Gluten-Free Main Dishes Recipes Steamed Dishes

Steamed Chicken with Black Bean Sauce

9 April 2024

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This steamed chicken with black bean sauce (蒜蓉豉汁蒸滑鸡) is a comforting home-cooked recipe that’s super simple, yet flavorful, and produces lots of sauce to pour over steamed rice. Serve with your favorite vegetable side for a completely awesome and hearty meal the whole family can agree on!

We were actually hoping to include this dish in our cookbook, but when we had to cut out 20 recipes due to page constraints, it ended up on the cutting room floor. Almost a year out from the book’s publication, we’re happy to finally be able to share it with you.

What is Waat?

If you haven’t made any of our Cantonese-style steamed chicken recipes, you have yet to experience a texture known in Cantonese cuisine as waat, which is often applied to chicken, as in waat gai (滑鸡). The word translates roughly to “slippery.”

Basically, when you take velveted chicken and steam it, it has this smooth, tender, juicy—and yes, slippery—mouthfeel and eating experience that you have to experience firsthand to fully appreciate.

Some of our other recipes that have this texture include:

This version uses fermented black beans and garlic, and I think it’s one of the tastiest!

pouring sauce over Chinese steamed chicken with fermented black bean

Veggie Sides to Serve with This Chicken

I know many readers like to mix in some vegetables with a pure protein dish like this to make a one-pot meal. While I very much understand this impulse (there always needs to be a few vegetable dishes on our table!), it’s not the best idea for this recipe.

You don’t want to dilute the flavor of the chicken with too many additional ingredients. Instead, cook a quick vegetable side dish separately to get your greens in.

Here are some options:

Browse our Vegetables category index for more vegetable side ideas!

Recipe Notes:

I like dark meat, which is why I used boneless skinless chicken thighs here, but I know a lot of you are going to ask about chicken breast. You can use boneless skinless chicken breast if you like—just cut the pieces a little thinner—about 2 inches (5cm) long by 0.5 inch (1.25cm) thick for the best texture.
The “black bean” in the black bean sauce here are Chinese fermented black beans. You can find these in Chinese grocery stores, and they’re very inexpensive. You may also be able to find them online! These are not the regular black beans in the canned vegetable aisle of your supermarket. They’re actually fermented black soybeans. They add a ton of umami to this dish and are a necessary component. If you can’t find them, try one of our other steamed chicken recipes (listed above) instead!
You’ll need a steaming set-up for this dish. Sarah wrote a thorough article on how to set up a steamer (without necessarily having any special equipment), which will help if you’re inexperienced with it!

Okay, let’s get to the recipe!

Scoop of steamed chicken thighs with fermented black bean and garlic

Recipe Instructions

In a medium bowl, marinate the chicken pieces with the Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, neutral oil, oyster sauce, sugar, sesame oil, salt, and white pepper. Mix well, until the chicken is evenly coated in marinade. Cover the bowl with an overturned plate and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

marinated boneless skinless chicken thigh pieces

1 hour before cooking, take the chicken out of the fridge and let it come up to room temperature. Prepare the garlic, scallions, and black beans.

black beans in bowl and chopped garlic on cutting board

Just before cooking, add the garlic, black beans, water (I used 2 tablespoons, but you can add up to 4 tablespoons if you like more sauce), and cornstarch. Mix well, and transfer the chicken to a heatproof dish large enough to keep the chicken in a single layer while still being able to fit into your steamer, with some depth to hold any sauce/juices. A glass or ceramic pie plate works well.

Bring the water in your steamer to boil over high heat, making sure the water level is at least a couple inches, but won’t touch the bottom of the dish when boiling. Cover and steam the chicken over high heat for 10 minutes. (Steam for 9 minutes if using chicken breast.)

Turn off the heat, but keep the lid tightly covered. Let the chicken sit in the steamer for an additional 2 minutes before removing the lid. Use a clean dry kitchen towel or plate lifter to carefully remove the dish from the steamer.

Using a plate lifter to remove hot dish from steaming in wok — *In case you’ve never seen one, this photo shows the type of plate gripper/lifter that we mean!* *Photo credit: Christine Han*

Garnish with chopped scallion, and serve immediately with rice and your favorite vegetable side!