This Chinese Lemon Chicken is light, crispy and coated in the most delicious tangy lemon sauce. Made with either chicken breast or thigh, this easy recipe guarantees juicy, golden chicken every time. This is a family favourite that tastes just like your favourite Chinese restaurant dish!
About This Lemon Chicken
This Chinese lemon chicken is a classic Chinese restaurant dish. My version is from my mother's recipe folder with my marinade and shows you how to make lemon chicken using either chicken breast or chicken thigh - I promise that if you use chicken breast, it will be super juicy and not dry, pinky swear!
Lemon chicken is either dredged in flour like potato flour or battered. My Chinese orange chicken is dredged in potato flour but I prefer lemon chicken in a light, crisp tempura style batter.
This recipe is actually quite easy to do. The chicken doesn't require much marinating at all (5 minutes while you make the batter and wait for the oil to heat up). And the sauce is done in around 5 minutes. Steaming the rice takes the longest time!
Video How To Make Lemon Chicken
Video: How to Make Lemon Chicken
Ingredients For Lemon Chicken
Chicken - we're using either chicken breast or boneless chicken thigh. Normally I'd use chicken thigh but I know a lot of y'all love chicken breast so I'm going to show you how to make the most succulent lemon chicken using chicken breast!
Bicarb - bicarbonate of soda, only needed if using chicken breast.
Soy sauce - light soy sauce.
Shaoxing wine - a cooking wine found at the Asian section of your supermarket. Sometimes called Shao Zing wine.
Ginger and garlic - freshly minced or jarred minced ginger and garlic works.
Sugar - white or caster/superfine sugar for the sauce and marinade.
Tempura batter mix - this is a flour blend that you can find in the Asian section of the supermarket made of plain flour, cornflour and baking powder with seasonings like salt and pepper added to it. I have an easy sub for this below if you can't find this.
Soda water - make sure that it is fizzy and cold. It makes the batter lighter and crispier!
Chicken broth - I use a chicken stock powder to make chicken broth or stock.
Lemon zest - finely grate the lemon zest. Tip: make sure to zest the lemon before juicing it (not the other way around, it's a pain!).
Lemon juice - I used freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Rice vinegar - a mild vinegar used to balance the sweetness and sourness of the sauce.
Cornflour/fine cornstarch - to help thicken the sauce. I don't like using more than 2 tablespoons of it because I find more gives the sauce a "furry" taste on the tongue.
Tips For Making Lemon Chicken
1 - Cut the chicken into very small and thin pieces. The batter will add weight to the chicken pieces and make them bigger.
2 - This can be made with either chicken breast or chicken thigh, whichever you prefer. Most Chinese restaurants use chicken thighs because they are juicier but with my velveting method below, I'll show you how to get the juiciest chicken breast! I don't recommend using chicken breast without velveting it (aka using bicarb) because it is a bit dry otherwise.
3 - Make sure that the oil is 180C/350F when you add the chicken. It becomes crispy when the cold chicken and batter hits the hot oil.
4 - Fry the chicken in 4-5 batches to avoid the oil temperature dropping. Oil tends to drop its temperature once cold food is added to it.
5 - I like serving lemon chicken with the sauce on the side. It is one of those dishes where the sauce does make the chicken lose its crispiness so this way you can have half a piece in the sauce and the other half unsauced so you get a bit of crispiness in each bite.
Preparation time: 10 minutes plus 30 minutes marinating time if using breast
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Makes: 4 serves
Ingredients Needed
For marinade
600g/1.3lbs chicken breast or boneless chicken thigh
1 teaspoon bicarb (optional, for chicken breast)
60ml/2flozs soy sauce
25ml/1floz Shaoxing wine
2 teaspoons minced ginger
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon sugar
For Batter
100g/3.5ozs tempura batter mix (see sub below)
1/2 cup/125ml/4flozs chilled soda water
For lemon sauce
1 cup/250ml/8.8flzos chicken broth
120g/4ozs caster or superfine sugar
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
55ml/2flozs lemon juice
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons cornflour/fine cornstarch
4 tablespoons cold water
Step-By-Step Instructions
Rinsing bicarb from chicken
Step 1 CHICKEN - Cut chicken breast into thin slices and then cut these in half so that they're small and thin pieces (don't forget the batter adds weight). Mix well with the bicarb and refrigerate for 30 minutes. Rinse under cold running water over a sieve for 45 seconds tossing with your hands making sure that every trace of bicarb is gone. Tip: while the chicken is velveting, steam some rice.
Quick marinade
Step 2 MARINADE - Mix the soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, ginger, garlic and sugar together in a bowl and toss the chicken in this marinade. It doesn't need long, only about 5 minutes while the oil heats up and you make the batter.
Tempura batter
Step 3 - BATTER - Heat 2 inches of oil in a deep fryer or a cast iron pot and when it reaches 180C/350F. Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. Add the soda water and stir to combine. Allow the excess marinade to drip off the chicken and dredge the pieces of chicken in the batter and fry in 4-5 batches for 3 minutes without touching, then turn over and fry on the other side for 2 minutes. Place on a double paper towel lined plate.
Step 4 SAUCE - Whisk the chicken broth, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, rice vinegar and salt in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3-4 minutes. In a bowl whisk the cornflour and water until a smooth liquid and turn off the heat. Stir this into the sauce. Serve the sauce at the table so that everyone can add as much as they like.
Substitution notes:
Shaoxing wine can be subbed with a dry sherry, sake or soju. You can also omit this or replace it with some chicken stock or verjus if you're looking for a non alcoholic alternative.
Tempura flour can be subbed with 75g/2.7ozs plain all purpose flour & 25g/1oz cornflour/fine cornstarch, 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Whisk together.
Rice vinegar can be subbed with white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar.
Personal Note
Sometimes nothing will satisfy like a succulent Chinese meal especially if we are travelling. My friend Sophia and I recently went to the Southern Highlands where we had a fantastic Chinese meal with mongolian lamb, sweet and sour pork and chow mein. Sophia's family are from Hong Kong although like me, she grew up here and I knew that if I suggested that we go for Chinese food she'd probably say yes and enjoy it.
Originally I was going to the Southern Highlands with Mr NQN but he had a wedding to go to. I didn't want to go by myself so I invited Sophia to come along. Sophia was happy to share a room but I am not really used to sharing a room with a friend. The only person I'm used to sharing with is Mr NQN. Usually when Laura comes along she gets her own room and Monica and I have shared a bathroom but had our own rooms.
Thankfully we both liked the same temperature for the room and were considerate of each other's space in the bathroom doing things like splitting the shelf space evenly. She likes to take the toiletries and teas with her whereas I usually leave them so there was no quibbling over that. It was a fun weekend.
Then she told me the secret to her being able to share rooms. She often travels with her 3 sisters and she told me how they usually book a high end hotel but have four girls in each room but they tell the hotel there are just 2 of them. I think they've got it down to a routine because she told me that nobody ever says anything!
So tell me Dear Reader, would you be good at sharing a room with a friend? And do you like lemon chicken?
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