If you’ve only ever had take out dishes at restaurants, this chicken will be a really fun recipe to try at home. Trust me, it tastes just as good and your kitchen will smell incredible.
This chicken recipe has everything you love about a restaurant dish, herbed rice, stir-fried vegetables, roasted chicken, and a garlic-pepper sauce that cooks and sizzles as it hits the hot plate. It looks impressive and sounds like a lot of work, but once you break it down, each component is actually very simple on its own.
The whole thing takes about 45 minutes, and most of it is just getting everything ready so it all comes together in the end. If you want to take your needle even further, ours creamy parmesan mushroom sauce makes an incredible addition to the plate, and do not forget to add our potato wedges on the side for the full restaurant experience.
Ingredients for Chicken Sizzler
Chicken breast: Boneless, cut into 3 pieces. It is marinated for 25-30 minutes before cooking.
Chicken Marinade: Garlic paste with ginger, salt, pepper, green chili sauce and soy sauce.
Garlic pepper sauce: Onion, celery, garlic, cilantro stalks, sriracha or red chili sauce, soy sauce, vegetable broth, cracked pepper, sugar and cornmeal.
Herbal rice: Cooked fried rice with butter, garlic and spring onion greens.
Vegetables: Broccoli, beans, carrots and cabbage
Mushrooms: Shiitake or shimeji, halved, fried with onion rings.
Potato points: Fried, served on a plate along with everything else.
Butter and oil: It is used in various ingredients for cooking and flavoring.
Frequently asked questions
Two possible reasons. Either the sizzler plate wasn’t heated enough, or the sauce wasn’t hot enough when you poured it. The dish should be drunk hot, which lasts 5-7 minutes on high heat. And the sauce should be boiling when it falls on the plate. If one of them is cold, you will not hear the noise.
You can serve all the same ingredients in a regular dish and it will taste just as good. You just won’t get the sizzling and smoking effect. If you want to get closer, heat a cast-iron or heavy-bottomed pan until it’s very hot, transfer everything to it and pour the boiling sauce on the table. It won’t be exactly the same, but you’ll get some sizzle.
Almost any vegetable holds up well when blanched and fried. Broccoli, beans, carrots, baby corn, bell peppers, zucchini, and asparagus all work. The key is to cut them into similar sized pieces so they cook evenly and always blanch them first so they are not raw on the plate.
Richa’s top tips
- Heat the stewpan until smoking. This is the most important step. If the dish is not hot enough, there will be no sizzle or smoke and the whole experience will fall flat. Make sure it’s on high heat for 5-7 minutes before you start assembling.
- The garlic pepper sauce should be boiling hot when you pour it. If the sauce has cooled a bit, it won’t sizzle and smoke when it’s on the plate. Keep it on the stove at a simmer until you’re ready to pour it.
- Blanch the vegetables before frying them. The vegetables do not have enough time to cook during the final assembly, so if they are put on the plate raw, they will remain raw. A quick one-minute blanching followed by an ice bath keeps them cooked but still crispy.
- Prepare everything before starting the assembly. Once you place the cooking plate on the wooden base, things move very quickly. If any component is not ready, the dish will cool and you will lose the sound. Get everything cooked, painted and on hand before you start.
- Don’t forget the cabbage under the rice. The cooking plate is extremely hot and rice placed directly on it will burn and stick almost immediately. Cabbage strips act as a barrier and hold everything in place.
Storage tips
- In the fridge: Store each component separately in an airtight container for up to 2 days. Garlic pepper sauce, herbed rice, stir-fried vegetables, mushrooms and roast chicken all store well individually. Keeping them separate means you can reheat and assemble a fresh stew whenever you want.
- Freezing: Garlic Chili Sauce freezes well for up to two weeks. The rest of the ingredients are best made fresh, as the vegetables lose their crunch and the chicken dries out after freezing.
- Reheating tip: Reheat the sauce on the stove until it boils, reheat the rice and vegetables separately and reheat the casserole dish. The topping only works when the dish and sauce are both hot, so don’t rush this step even when reheating.
Ideas for service
A chicken sizzler is a full meal on its own, but if you want to make it feel like a full restaurant experience:
Personalization ideas
- Make it vegetarian: Swap the chicken for marinated paneer or thick slices of tofu. Use the same marinade and fry them in a hot pan until golden. Garlic pepper sauce works equally well with both.
- Turn on the rice: Try egg fried rice OR fried rice with basil instead of rice herb for a different flavor base.
- Add the shrimp: Marinate and cook some shrimp along with the chicken for a surf-style cake. They cook quickly, so add them to the plate right at the end.
Did you know?
Sizzler was invented in India. Unlike most western-influenced dishes that came to India from abroad, the sizzler actually originated in Mumbai in the 1960s. A restaurateur named Merwan Irani at Café Naaz in Malabar Hill is widely credited with creating the first sizzler dish. He was inspired by the Japanese teppanyaki style of cooking, but adapted it for Indian restaurants with local ingredients and sauces. From Mumbai, the concept spread across India and eventually to Southeast Asia.
If your family loves needles as much as mine, save yourself a trip to the restaurant and make this at home. The food tastes just as good, the sound is just as dramatic and you can eat in your pyjamas. Tag me on Instagram @my_foodstory when you try it.
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Herb rice
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Heat ½ teaspoon of butter in a pan or kadai, add the garlic and fry for a few seconds until light golden. Add rice, salt, mix well, top with spring onion greens. Set aside.
Frying vegetables
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Blanch the vegetables: Have a large bowl of ice-cold water ready. Boil 1½ cups of water in a pot, add ¼ teaspoon of salt, broccoli, beans, carrots and boil for no more than 1 minute and remove from heat. Drain and plunge into ice cold water and drain again. Set aside.
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Frying the vegetables: Heat a pan or kadai with a teaspoon of butter, add the blanched vegetables, ⅛ teaspoon of salt and fry for 1-2 minutes until they turn shiny on the outside.
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Sautéing the Mushrooms: Heat a pan or kadai with 1 tbsp oil, add the onion rings and fry for a minute until translucent, add the mushrooms, ⅛ tsp salt and fry for 1-2 minutes until lightly browned.
Garlic pepper sauce
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Heat oil in a pan or kadai, add ginger, garlic, celery and saute for a few seconds until fragrant. Add salt, sugar, pepper, ketchup, vinegar, sriracha, soy sauce, mix and cook on medium heat for a few seconds until boiling. Add mix well, let it boil and cook for 4-5 minutes. Mix the cornmeal slurry and add it to the pot, stirring constantly, as soon as it starts to boil, lower the heat and cook for 2-3 minutes until the sauce thickens and becomes glossy.
Sizzler production
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Heat the pan over high heat until smoking and using tongs or kitchen gloves place it on the wooden base. Add 1 teaspoon of butter to the frying pan, spread the strips of cabbage leaves to cover the pan and fry for a few seconds. Spread herb rice on top of cabbage leaves, add fried vegetables and potato pieces. Place the roasted chicken on top of the vegetables, add the mushrooms on top of the chicken, pour the boiling hot garlic pepper sauce (refer to note 4) over the chicken and mushrooms and also around the sizzler plate. The sauce will brown and smoke, serve immediately.
- You can add any vegetables, mushrooms of your choice to the stew.
- Blanching the vegetables is very important to ensure that the vegetables are not raw when served in the stew.
- Cabbage leaves are added so that the rice does not stick to the pan and burn during serving.
- The garlic pepper sauce should be boiling hot when poured into the stew as it provides the caustic and smoky effect.
Calories: 1168kcal, Carbohydrates: 169g, Protein: 82g, Fat: 34g, Saturated fat: 11g, Polyunsaturated fat: 4g, Monounsaturated fats: 14g, Trans fats: 0.5g, Cholesterol: 101mg, Sodium: 3225mg, Potassium: 6986mg, Fiber: 55g, Sugar: 42g, Vitamin A: 22625was, Vitamin C: 1661mg, Calcium: 1011mg, Iron: 16mg
This article was researched and written by Harita Odedra.