Asian Sweet Chili Chicken is crispy, sticky, sweet, slightly spicy and completely addicting. This recipe is sure to be a new family favorite!
This Chinese Chicken is perfectly crispy with a little sweet heat! Other favorites of mine include Chinese Honey Chicken and Easy Sesame Chicken.
Why You’ll Love This Chicken?
- Restaurant style food in the comfort of your own kitchen!
- Pair this meal with some white rice and you have a delicious meal in 30 minutes.
Sabrina’s Asian Sweet Chili Chicken Recipe
This Asian Sweet Chili Chicken is a breeze to make because the sauce is just a few ingredients and the batter takes just a few minutes to combine and even less time to fry. All of that to say you could be sitting down to this dish in the amount of time it takes you to steam the rice you’re making on the side.
Recipe Card
Ingredients
Tempura Battered Chicken:
- 2 egg whites
- 1 cup all-purpose flour , sifted
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup water , ice cold
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 1 pound chicken thighs , boneless-skinless and cut into 1 inch pieces
Sauce:
- canola oil for frying
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 3 cloves garlic , minced
- 3 green onions , sliced thinly, tip to tail not including the root
- 1/2 cup Thai sweet chili sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
Optional Garnishes:
- white sesame seeds
- minced green onions
Instructions
- Mix together the batter ingredients in a large bowl.
- Add the chicken pieces to the batter to coat.
- Heat a frying pan up with oil deep enough to fry your chicken pieces without them touching the bottom of the pan, a couple inches should be enough space.
- Using a slotted spoon drain the batter as much as possible and slide the chicken into the pan.
- Break apart the chicken after the crust starts to form and cook until the chicken is golden brown (4-5 minutes)
- Work in batches to prevent the oil from dropping too far in temperature.
- Remove the last batch of chicken from the pan and discard almost all the oil, leaving just a couple of tablespoons in the pan.
- Add the garlic and green onions to the pan and cook it on medium heat for 20-30 seconds.
- Add the chicken back in along with the sweet chili sauce and crushed red pepper.
- Toss to combine and serve immediately.
- Garnish with sesame seeds or green onions if desired.
Nutrition
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Sabrina’s Tip
For an extra light and crispy coating, use very cold water when making the batter. Sometimes I also swap out ice water for ice cold club soda. Keeping the liquid cold helps prevent the batter from becoming heavy and dense, while club soda adds carbonation that creates tiny air bubbles as the chicken fries in the wok or pan. These bubbles help give the coating that crispy texture that makes this chicken so delicious, crispy, and light.
Table of contents
About this Recipe
Asian Sweet Chili Chicken combines two of my favorite things about Asian cooking, tempura batter and sweet chili sauce. The batter is perfectly light and crispy so that it doesn’t weigh down the meal. It is a mix of cornstarch and flour that you add ice water to (drain the ice out first). This means you’ll want to work fast because the colder that batter is the crispier it is going to be. What makes this dish crispy and light as possible is cooking in a wok. I reference it a lot when it comes to Asian cooking because the high heat, quick cooking is the best way to get crispy small bites of proteins.
Ingredients
- Sweet Chili Sauce: Adds that sweet glaze to the dish that you’ll have trouble replicating without quite a lot of work. I recommend Mae Ploy, Thai Kitchen, A Taste of Thai, or if you’re in a pinch use the Trader Joe’s brand. If using Trader Joe’s, add a bit more than what’s measured of the crushed red peppers since the Trader Joe’s variety is not spicy at all.
Pairing Suggestions
Make this an family style Asian night and serve this chicken along with my Mongolian Beef and Pineapple Chicken recipes. Make a side of Chinese Broccoli and Chinese Steamed Rice for a complete meal.
Related Recipes
More Delicious Chinese Chicken Recipes
Photos used in previous versions of this post
Would you please refresh your sweet chili sauce Amazon link? The one you provide is no longer valid. I would love to make this just has you intended when you originally wrote the recipe.
Just a note to say how much I appreciate this website. We have really enjoyed every recipe we have tried. What a talent you have, Sabrina!
I tried to find this link in the annals of Dinner Then Dessert history, but came up short. I’d recommend either Mae Ploy, Thai Kitchen, or A Taste of Thai. I made sure to delete the link so nobody else has the same problem. Hope this helps!
I’ve been using this recipe for years (all the way back to 2019 when I first put it in my recipe document) and it’s one of the three Asian chicken recipes I keep coming back to (my large family can never agree on which of the three is best and we like having variety… but this one is my favorite!). It’s a delicious recipe and so easy to tweak however you want it. All the ratios seem quite good too, we never end up with a significant amount of wasted tempura batter. I’m not one who usually reviews recipes but when I saw how few this one had I knew I should seeing just how often we make it. Delicious!
Thanks Carolyn and thanks for the five star review!
My son loves this recipe!!!!!!! He keeps asking me to make it!!!!!!!!!
Wonderful! Tell your son Thanks and thank you for the five star review.
Can you bake the chicken instead of frying it? Trying to do a healthier version of this. Thanks!
I haven’t tried this recipe in the oven. If I did, I’m guessing it would have to be at pretty high heat (like 400 degrees) to get the same glazed crunch. I’m super interested in hearing if you try this in the oven! Please let us know what you decided to do!