Black Sesame Oil Chicken Soup
麻油雞·(má yóu jī)
湯與麵 (Tāng yǔ Miàn) - Healing Soups and Comforting Noodles
Lay coins of old ginger into a cold pan with Taiwanese black sesame oil, bringing the heat up slow until the ginger edges curl and blister before a splash of Michiu—black sesame oil colliding with old ginger and rice wine. Má Yóu Jī is Taiwan’s winter armor and postpartum tonic, slick with dark oil and fiery with ginger. Home-style Má Yóu Jī comes down to three grandma rules: start your ginger in a cold pan so the delicate black sesame oil never turns bitter, dry-sear the bone-in chicken thighs in their own rendering fat instead of blanching them, and never, ever touch the salt shaker until the very end. Using a half-wine ratio and a touch of Hakka-style rock sugar, thirty minutes on a back burner yields a sweet-savory broth on a Tuesday night without putting the whole family to sleep. Skim the amber oil, ladle the soup into warm bowls, and drink the broth dry.
Before you start
Scrub the ginger clean and slice it into thin coins without peeling.
Pat the chicken pieces thoroughly dry with paper towels so they sear cleanly.
Soak the goji berries in a small splash of rice wine to plump.
Ingredients
- black sesame oil3 tbsp
- old ginger50 g
- bone-in skin-on chicken thighs or drumsticks2 lb
- Taiwanese Michiu rice wine2 cup
- water2 cup
- rock sugar1 tbsp
- goji berries1 tbsp
- dried red dates4 small
- kosher salt1/4 tsp
Method
- 01
Add the black sesame oil and sliced ginger to a cold Dutch oven or wok, then turn the heat to medium-low.
Black sesame oil has a dangerously low smoke point and turns acrid if overheated. Bringing the ginger up from a cold pan extracts its spicy oils gently over 5 to 8 minutes until the slices shrivel, curl at the edges, and turn golden brown.
- 02
Raise the heat to medium-high, add the chicken skin-side down, and sear aggressively until the meat renders its own fat.
Let the skin brown undisturbed for a minute before stir-frying. Keep cooking until all the watery liquid evaporates and the chicken is sizzling purely in sesame oil and its own rendered fat; this dry-sear eliminates any raw poultry funk without needing a separate blanching pot.
- 03
Pour in the Michiu rice wine and boil vigorously uncovered for 2 to 3 minutes.
If cooking over an open gas flame, briefly kill the heat while pouring so you do not flare up your eyebrows, then crank it right back to high to cook off the sharp alcohol vapors.
- 04
Add the water, rock sugar, and red dates, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer on low for 25 to 30 minutes.
The rock sugar is an old Hakka trick that rounds out the earthy bitterness of the black sesame oil and leaves the chicken falling off the bone.
- 05
Stir in the soaked goji berries, simmer for 1 minute, and season with salt if needed right before serving.
Salting early reacts with the black sesame oil and turns the broth bitter. Taste first—if your Asian market rice wine came pre-salted, skip the salt entirely.
Notes
Buy pure black sesame oil and rough-skinned old ginger.
Standard toasted white sesame oil will not work here—look for dark, viscous black sesame oil (黑麻油) at your Asian grocer. Grab the gnarly, fibrous old ginger (老薑), not the smooth young stuff, and leave the skin on where the warming compounds live.
Check the label on your Michiu bottle.
Because of American liquor laws, many Asian supermarkets sell salted Michiu cooking wine on the regular shelves. It works great here, provided you do not add a single grain of extra salt at the end.
Turn it into a full weeknight meal with cabbage and noodles.
Toss a few big handfuls of torn green cabbage into the pot during the last 10 minutes of simmering to soak up the dark, glossy oil. Ladle everything over bowls of boiled Taiwanese wheat thread noodles (mee sua) or steamed short-grain rice.