Oh yeah, I made the sauce about three hours before and refrigerated it in a covered bowl and also marinated the chicken for the three hours too because I had an appointment I had to go to, so this is something you can prepare in advance and cook later. Absolutely fantastic! I served it with Chinese Chicken Fried Rice (by LISA TOURVILLE) from this site but left out the chicken in the rice. I would recommend going easy on the chili paste because you can always add more when it's cooking if you want it hotter. I didn't know what one ounce of chili paste looked like so I used about a tablespoon (keeping in mind that I tripled the sauce). I also replaced the water with chicken stock and thinned the sauce as needed at the end with chicken stock rather than water. I also didn't have peanuts so I used about a tablespoon (maybe a little more) of chunky peanut butter and it worked out great! I didn't triple the water chestnuts and just used the one 8 oz can. I cut back on the sesame oil because it can become overpowering and six tablespoons of sesame oil would definitely have been overpowering. I tripled the marinade and the sauce, but only used one tablespoon of sesame oil and two tablespoons of olive oil (tripling would have called for six tablespoons of sesame oil). I made very few changes which is unusual for me. This was the absolute BEST! Truly restaurant flavor.
If you want to finish off the meal like they do in Beijing, serve fresh fruit: Fuji apples, pineapple and kiwi. To make sure you've got enough food, try a few simple (and cheap!) Chinese sides like potatoes and green peppers (? cù liu tu dòu si), eggs and tomatoes (? xi hóng shì chao ji dàn), eggs and wood ear mushrooms (? mù er chao ji dàn), eggs and cucumber (? huáng gua chao ji dàn) egg drop soup, sweet corn soup, and broccoli with garlic (? suàn róng xi lán hua). To solve the issue of there being too little sauce, don't cook the chicken separately after the sauce has been warmed, throw the chicken and marinade in and stir constantly until it's cooked through. The carrot provides a wonderful crunchiness and sweetness that balances nicely with the spice. Lastly, skip the water chestnuts and add a carrot, like they do in Beijing. I also agree with some other reviewers that chili paste is probably better than chili sauce. (I used 1 teaspoon in the marinade and 2 teaspoons in the sauce.) A few extra notes: Use Chinese rice wine, like Shaoxing, and light (as opposed to dark) soy sauce, if you can find them. With regard to ingredients, I agree with other reviewers: cut the cornstarch in both the marinade and the sauce. I lived in China for two years, and this recipe (with some important but minor changes) comes very close to the Kung Pao chicken that can be found in Beijing restaurants. Hope this is helpful to you from someone who has had this a bunch! :) In the original recipe there are far too many of those things that the chicken kind of gets lost. The only things I wouldn't double are the peanuts and the water chestnuts. The original recipe actually needs a little more sauce then is written. Finally, you need to double the sauce part of this recipe. I have done these plenty of times without measuring it out exactly and plenty of times with measuring it out and it turns out virtually the same. Most of these things are one to one or two to one, so it's actually pretty easy to figure out. I think it's the vinegar, but it completely mellows out the spice of it, so you definitely have to over compensate. I would also marinade the chicken in it as well so you just an extra layer of spicy. I think I used almost a fourth of my HUGE jar of sambal to make this work.
You have to add A LOT more sambal or chile paste to make this even remotely close to something you've tasted before. Now for all you REAL kung pao chicken lovers that want the SPICE. This is a great base recipe, without a doubt and if you don't like spice at all, I would still to this recipe exactly.
Ok ya'll I have made this recipe so many times now, I kind of know what goes in it without looking at the recipe.
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