The cooking method of chicken is nothing more than frying and stewing. Dry-cooking, hand-tearing, white cutting, soup making, stewing and curry are actually extensions of the above two basic methods. Stewed chicken and mushrooms have simple ingredients and are easy to make. Why are they so popular in Northeast China? Thanks to the combination of these three ingredients, mushrooms are delicious, vermicelli is smooth, chicken is tender and smooth, and calories are supplemented after meals and drinks. Three kinds of ingredients are the most popular and easy to buy in Northeast China!
Mushrooms for chicken stew may be dried mushrooms, straw mushrooms, Agrocybe aegerita, Pleurotus eryngii, even Flammulina velutipes and Pleurotus ostreatus, which are the common mushrooms that people outside the Northeast first think of. In fact, the most authentic way of this dish is to use the pure wild hazel mushroom produced in Changbai Mountain area, which is called "mountain treasure" and "the fourth treasure in Northeast China".
Corylus heterophylla is umbrella-shaped, light khaki when fresh, and brown after drying. In July and August, it grows on the stems, roots, fallen trees and branches buried in the soil of coniferous broad-leaved trees. It is one of the few edible fungi that can't be cultivated artificially, so it is only dried in the wild, and the yield is not high. Good quality hazelnuts are more expensive. The dried hazel mushroom is similar to the dried Agrocybe aegerita, the meat quality of the umbrella cover is thicker and smaller than that of Agrocybe aegerita, and the stem of the hazel mushroom is thicker than that of Agrocybe aegerita.
The essence of this dish is not chicken or vermicelli in the eyes of the northeast. What they value most is hazel mushrooms. As long as this dish is served, people basically forget the chicken and choose to eat hazelnuts. Strange to say, hazel mushrooms are not particularly brilliant when burned alone or cooked with other meat. Only when the chicken is stewed together is it very delicious.
Of course, the flavor base of chicken stewed mushrooms is definitely chicken, which can fully stimulate the fragrance of hazelnut mushrooms. Northeasters are also very particular about the choice of chickens. It takes more than a year for a local rooster to deserve a hazelnut mushroom, and it takes about 1 hour to stir-fry and stew slowly.