• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
Umami Days

Umami Days

Meaty with a dash of veggies

  • Pick a meal
    • One Bowl Meals
    • Breakfast
    • Lunch / Dinner
      • Appetizers
      • Salads
      • Soups
      • Main Courses
      • Side Dishes
      • Sweets
    • Snacks
    • Drinks
      • Summer drinks
      • Cold weather drinks
      • Cocktail hour
  • Pick your protein
    • Chicken, duck & turkey
    • Meat
    • Seafood
    • Eggs
    • Mushrooms
    • Tofu
    • Vegetables
  • Pick your carb
    • Rice & grains
    • Noodles
    • Bread
  • Newsletter
  • Sidebar
    • Kitchen
    • Dining
    • Edible Garden
    • Food Tales
  • Newsletter sign-up!
  • Recipe index
    • By Meal
      • One Bowl Meals
      • Breakfast
      • Lunch / Dinner
        • Appetizers
        • Salads
        • Soups
        • Main Courses
        • Side Dishes
        • Sweets
      • Snacks
      • Drinks
        • Refreshing summer drinks
        • Cold weather drinks
        • Cocktail hour
    • By Main Protein
      • Chicken, duck & turkey
      • Meat
      • Seafood
      • Eggs
      • Mushrooms
      • Tofu
      • Vegetables
    • By Carb
      • Rice & grains
      • Noodles
      • Bread
  • Sidebar
    • Kitchen
    • Dining
    • Edible Garden
    • Food Tales
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Contact
Chicken, duck & turkey Eggs Mushrooms Vegetables Lunch / Dinner Main Courses

Chicken chop suey

Published: 03.30.2021 » Last updated: 12.26.2022

Along with sweet sour pork, I grew up thinking that chop suey was the quintessential Chinese food. Then I read that the dish was born in America. If that’s not confusing enough, I would learn much later that the American tale might be more myth than fact.

Chicken chop suey

You might have read the story that, during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad when the Chinese flocked to the United States to seek work, American laborers wanted food but there was this Chinese cook had only bits and pieces of meat and vegetables. He tossed them together, added sauce, and chop suey was born.

A variation of the story pins the birth of chop suey during the Gold Rush. American miners demanded food, the flustered Chinese cook didn’t have much to cook with so he got creative.

The story, in either version, sounds plausible enough especially when we consider how good the Chinese are at salvaging leftovers because being wasteful is frowned upon in Asia. Just think of fried rice and you get the idea.

While the term chop suey itself, spelled that way, may be an American thing, there are anthropological bases that the Chinese-American chop suey is most probably an adaption of the Chinese tsap seui (literally, “miscellaneous leftovers”), a dish found in Guandong where many of the early Chinese immigrants to the United States came from.

The difference between the source and the adaptation is in the cooking. The immigrants who introduced the stir fry to America were not skilled cooks, and their attempt to replicate the dish from home was more Frankenstein-like than anything else.

American-style chop suey, in its earliest form, bore little resemblance to anything found in China. It was so bad that the Chinese in America did not eat it.

But all that was long ago. Today, chop suey is cooked in pretty much the same way that most meat and vegetable stir fries are. When prepared by cooks who understand the essence of stir-frying — high heat, short cooking time and just enough thick sticky brownish sauce to coat the ingredients — chop suey can be a truly delicious dish.

Vegetables for chicken chop suey

Start by prepping all the components — cut the chicken and vegetables, boil and peel the quail eggs, clean and cut the mushrooms, and mix the ingredients for the sauce. Do all that before you even turn on the stove. Why?

Mushrooms, quail eggs and sauce for chicken chop suey

As mentioned earlier, chop suey is a stir fried dish, and proper stir frying means cooking at an intensely high heat for a short time. Once you begin cooking, there will be no time left to peel and cut the ingredients.

Sauteeing spices before adding chicken

The cooking begins with a spice base. I like the simplicity of garlic and shallot combo. Saute them (that means medium heat) and wait until you can smell them before turning up the heat, spreading the chicken and sprinkling in salt and pepper.

Stir frying chicken, carrot, asparagus, green beans and bell pepper

Once the chicken loses its raw appearance, start adding the vegetables. Do this in sequence beginning with the one that requires the longest cooking time, and stir frying between additions. It is also important to season after each addition.

Stir frying chicken and vegetables

My preferred order is to add the carrot first followed by bell pepper, asparagus, green beans and, lastly, white cabbage. The quality and texture of vegetables differ. If your carrot is quite young and tender, for instance, it doesn’t have to go in first. You will have to determine the order that works best for you.

Pouring sauce over chicken chop suey

Once all the vegetables have been stir fried with the chicken, the mushrooms and quail eggs go in. The stir frying continues before the sauce is poured in.

Chicken chop suey with quail eggs

Stir fry some more until the sauce thickens, loses its cloudy appearance and coats every piece of solid ingredient. Give your chicken chop suey a final taste, adjust the seasonings if needed, and serve immediately.

Full recipe below

Chicken Chop Suey

Connie Veneracion
Stir fried bits and pieces of vegetables, and meat or seafood tossed with a little sauce. That's chop suey. In this chicken chop suey recipe, we've added mushrooms and quail eggs too.
Tip: Seasoning lightly but frequently as ingredients are added into the pan ensures more depth of flavor.
Chicken chop suey
Print
Prep Time 15 mins
Cook Time 10 mins
Total Time 25 mins
Course Main Course
Cuisine American Chinese, Chinese
Servings 4 people

Ingredients
  

Sauce

  • 1 cup chicken bone broth
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons Shaoxing rice wine
  • 1 ½ tablespoons oyster sauce
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon sesame seed oil
  • 1 heaping tablespoon tapioca starch - or potato starch or corn starch

To stir fry

  • 2 tablespoons cooking oil
  • 2 cloves garlic - peeled and crushed
  • 2 shallots - peeled and finely sliced
  • 400 grams chicken thigh fillets - cut into thin strips
  • salt
  • pepper
  • 1 carrot - peeled and cut into thin slices
  • 1 bell pepper - deseeded and diced
  • 8 asparagus spears - cut into two-inch lengths
  • 6 green beans - stringed and cut into one-inch lengths
  • ½ medium head white cabbage - cored and cut into half-inch slices
  • 24 quail eggs - hard boiled and peeled
  • 4 shiitake mushrooms - (caps only) halved or quartered
  • 100 grams oyster mushrooms - separated

Instructions
 

  • In a bowl, stir together all the ingredients for the sauce.
  • Heat the cooking oil in a wok.
  • Saute the garlic and shallots for half a minute.
  • Turn up the heat and spread the chicken in the hot oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  • Stir fry just until the chicken is no longer pink.
  • Add the carrot slices (they take longest to cook so they go in first). Stir fry for half a minute.
  • Add the bell pepper, asparagus and green beans. Sprinkle with more salt and pepper. Stir fry for one minute.
  • Add the cabbage and sprinkle in some salt and pepper. Stir fry for half a minute.
  • Add the quail eggs, shiitake and oyster mushrooms. Again, sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper. Stir fry for half a minute.
  • Stir the sauce to loosen the starch that settled in the bottom then pour into the wok with the chicken and vegetables.
  • Cook, stirring, until the sauce is thick and clear.
  • Taste and adjust the seasonings, if needed.
Print
Keyword Stir Fry, Vegetables

More recipes, cooking tips & food tales

Mushroom fries

Mushroom fries (battered crispy oyster mushrooms)

Bacon, lettuce and tomato bruschetta

Bacon, lettuce and tomato bruschetta

Japanese-style gingered chicken, shiitake and bok choy soup

Gingered chicken, shiitake and bok choy soup

Taiwanese-style oyster omelette

Taiwanese-style oyster omelette

Cheese-stuffed chili spring rolls

Cheese-stuffed chili spring rolls

Cambodian / Vietnamese caramelized pork and eggs served with rice

Caramelized pork and eggs

Sidebar

Connie Veneracion, Chiang Mai, 2020

Hi, I’m Connie!

Welcome to Umami Days, a blog that advocates innovative home cooking for pleasurable everyday dining. No trendy diets, no food fads and definitely no ludicrous recipe names like crustless quiche, noodleless pho or chocolate lasagna.

  • About
  • Recipes
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Contact

Umami Days is powered by Apple, Canon, coffee & one bowl meals · Copyright © 2023 Connie Veneracion · All Rights Reserved