My friends and I accidentally stumbled upon a chicken taste-off with my closest friends during our last playdate with the kids. Which one is better: roast chicken from Larry the Bird or a traditional Chinese Beggar’s Chicken?

Beggar’s Chicken, 叫化鸡” (Jiàohuā jī), is a traditional Chinese dish that has been cherished for centuries. Legend has it that the dish originated in Hangzhou during the Qing dynasty, when a beggar stole a chicken and, lacking cooking utensils, wrapped it in lotus leaves and buried it in mud to roast it. The result was a succulent and flavorful chicken encased in a hardened mud shell – thus, Beggar’s Chicken was born. If I were to compare its popularity to any other Chinese dish, it would be that of Peking duck. In Beijing, Peking duck is the epitome of local cuisine; in Hangzhou, that spot is reserved for Beggar’s Chicken.

The wrapped chicken is slow-cooked in a clay oven for several hours, allowing the flavors to meld and intensify. As the mud hardens and forms a crust, it seals in the moisture and juices of the chicken, resulting in tender and succulent meat that practically falls off the bone. The slow cooking process also allows the chicken to absorb the subtle flavors of the lotus leaves and seasoning, creating a truly unforgettable dining experience.

When the cooking process is complete, the hardened mud shell is cracked open to reveal the steaming hot chicken within. The aroma that wafts from the dish is nothing short of heavenly, enticing diners with its rich and savory scent. The chicken is typically served alongside fragrant rice and a selection of dipping sauces, allowing diners to customize their dining experience to their liking.

Beyond its delectable taste, Beggar’s Chicken holds a special place in Chinese culture as a symbol of prosperity and good fortune. It is often served during special occasions such as weddings, birthdays, and New Year celebrations, where it is believed to bring luck and happiness to those who partake in it.

While the traditional method of preparing Beggar’s Chicken remains unchanged, modern interpretations of the dish can be found in upscale restaurants and home kitchens, where chefs put their creative spin on this classic recipe. There are also brands like 鸡麦郎叫花鸡 (jimailang jiaohuaji), a national chain that delivers Beggar’s Chicken to your door within the hour for around RMB 50 a chicken.

So, which one wins: roast chicken or Beggar’s Chicken? It’s a bit of a toss-up. Larry the Bird makes our favorite roast chicken in town, with its secret blend of seasoning. The meat is succulent and flavorful and the skin is crispy and perfectly seasoned. But Beggar’s Chicken is packed with a whole different set of flavors, and when you’ve got a bunch of kids running around during a play date who only want to occasionally make pit stops at the table for nibbles, a whole chicken makes for a perfect nit-picking snack.

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Images: Mina Yan

“You can tell a fish head anything you want to,” sang Barnes and Barnes on their immortal 1979 hit Fish Heads. “They won’t answer. They can’t talk.”

In the same song they boast of taking a fish head out to the movies, and not having to pay for its ticket. It seems unlikely that though anyone would want to go on a date or share confidences with a chicken head, let alone write a song to it. Fish heads are disturbing enough, with their glassy, empty stare. But a chicken, even on a supermarket meat counter, has a reptilian menace which suggests that it’s about to return from the dead with all its chums and trigger a galline zombie apocalypse.

Chickens in the west are generally sold with head, feet and innards removed. As regular readers will know, I strongly believe that if you eat meat, there’s no point in being squeamish and sentimental about it. I deplore the trend to process food and conceal its real nature. It’s no wonder children are confused about where food comes from when they’re fed turkey dinosaurs. Nonetheless the bald, yellow heads are unsettling when you’re not used to them.

In our early, befuddled days in Beijing, I decided to alleviate our homesickness by making a traditional Sunday roast dinner. We picked out a plump, tasty-looking chicken, then my wife attempted, by means of sign language, to ask the butcher to cut off the head and feet. He took our chicken and methodically chopped it into tiny pieces, head, feet, giblets and all, scooped the resultant shambles into a bag and handed it to us. We ate roast beef instead.

These days I just take a cleaver, lop off the extremities myself and boil them up for stock. But I’m left wondering just what it is about chicken heads that’s so disturbing. The answer lies in evolution. Birds, scientists now say, are not descended from dinosaurs – they are dinosaurs.  This adds another layer of irony to the idea of a turkey stegosaurus. It also means that the fastest animal alive is a flying carnivorous dinosaur, which preys on other dinosaurs by attacking them in mid-air. Who needs Jurassic Park?

Chicken heads are so useless that even chickens don’t need them. In 1945 a Colorado farmer decapitated a chicken for his dinner, and was amazed to find that it survived the process. Being an enterprising chap, he took “Mike the Headless Wonder Chicken” on tour, exhibiting him to huge crowds across the USA. (This was in the days before the internet, kids.)

But perhaps we should not be encouraging headless chickens. There are enough of them in positions of authority as it is…

With Beijing being a ghost town, restaurants closed or operating at unusual times. Don’t let the cravings for Chinese meals stop you from satisfying that need. From our archives here is how to make the classic gongbao jiding

Outside of China, think Chinese food and one of the first dishes that probably comes to mind is kungpao (or gongbao)chicken. The sweet-salty-spicy flavor in the chicken and the crunch in the mouth from the peanuts is a winning combination. It’s a popular take-out food and sometimes comes in those adorable New York style cardboard boxes that feature in many a Hollywood movie. It is best savored with steaming hot rice. 

The dish is said to have been named after Qing Dynasty official Ding Baozhen, whose official title was Gongbao, which literally means “palace guardian.” During the Cultural Revolution, the name of the dish was considered politically incorrect because of its association with an imperial officer, so it was renamed hongbao jiding (fast-fried chicken cubes) or hula jiding (chicken cubes with seared chillies). By the 1980s, the original name was restored to the dish.

This classic gongbao jiding of Szechuan cuisine involves a tongue-numbing experience, thanks to generous portions of flaming hot Szechuan peppercorms. It is not a sensation that agrees with most foreigners, so over the years variations have been made on the original recipe to make it milder and more suited for non-Chinese palates. In the United States, a ban on the import of Szechuan peppers was in effect from 1968 to 2005 because the peppers were known to carry a tree disease that could infect other crops. The ban resulted in yet a another form of the recipe that does not use the peppercorns and is now widely accepted as the American-style gong bao chicken.

When we tried to replicate this staple Chinese dish at home recently, we also chose to omit the fistfuls of Szechuan pepper that were recommended. However, we used a packet of Chinese gongbao jiding mix, and this resulted in a fiery flavor without numbing our taste buds. The gongbao jiding packet is available in any grocery store or market, local or for expats, for approximately RMB5. Picking up a ready-mix seasoning packet is a good way to introduce yourself to Chinese cooking, and eliminates the need for buying several different ingredients that you will use only very little of.

Find out more here.

Photos by Dana Cosio-Mercado