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How to Velvet Chicken
If you’ve ever wondered why the chicken in your homemade stir-fries and Chinese soups never quite tastes or feels like the chicken from a Chinese restaurant, this is probably why. You need to velvet it. I spent years wondering what I was doing wrong before I finally started velveting chicken, and honestly, life changing. It gives you that soft, tender texture that somehow makes the whole dish taste right, and now I do it almost every time I’m cooking chicken for a stir-fry or soup.
How to Velvet Chicken
Learn how to velvet chicken using bicarbonate of soda for incredibly tender, juicy chicken with that familiar Chinese restaurant-style texture. I use this simple method whenever I’m making stir-fries, noodle dishes or soups because it completely changes the texture of chicken breast and helps it stay soft rather than turning dry or chewy. This easy chicken velveting technique takes just a few minutes of preparation and is one of my favourite little kitchen tricks for better homemade Chinese food.
Ingredients
- 500g chicken breast, finely sliced, fatty bits removed
- 3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Instructions
- Place the sliced chicken in a bowl and sprinkle over the bicarbonate of soda. Mix through by hand until all the chicken is evenly coated.
- Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Transfer to a sieve or colander and rinse well under cold running water. Pat completely dry with paper towel.
- Heat oil in a wok or large frying pan over high heat. Add the velveted chicken in a single layer and stir-fry for 3-4 minutes, tossing regularly, until just cooked through and lightly golden.
- Add the velveted chicken to a gently simmering soup, stirring to separate the pieces. Cook for 3-4 minutes, or until the chicken is just cooked through and tender.
Velveting
To Cook in a Stir Fry
To Cook in Soup
Notes
- Velveting is a Chinese cooking technique that gives you impossibly tender, silky chicken that's nothing like the dry, chewy result you often get at home. Once you know how to do it, you'll never go back.
- Slice the chicken as thinly and evenly as you can, ideally around 3-4mm thick. This ensures the bicarbonate of soda penetrates evenly and the chicken cooks through quickly without drying out.
- Rinsing the chicken thoroughly after the 30 minutes is essential. Any residual bicarbonate of soda will leave a metallic, soapy taste on the finished dish. Rinse until the water runs completely clear.
- Patting the chicken completely dry after rinsing is just as important, especially for stir frying. Wet chicken will steam rather than sear and you won't get that lightly golden colour.
- Don't be tempted to leave the bicarbonate of soda on for longer than 30 minutes. More time doesn't mean more tenderness. It means mushy, over-tenderised chicken with an unpleasant texture.
- This technique works best with chicken breast, which is the cut most prone to drying out. Thigh meat is naturally more forgiving but can also be velveted if you prefer.
- Cook the velveted chicken over high heat and don't crowd the pan. Too many pieces at once will drop the temperature and cause the chicken to steam rather than sear.
- Velveted raw chicken can be stored in the fridge for up to 24 hours before rinsing and cooking, making it a useful prep-ahead step.
- Not suitable for freezing once velveted as the texture can become grainy after defrosting.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
4Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 208Total Fat: 4gSaturated Fat: 1gUnsaturated Fat: 3gCholesterol: 107mgSodium: 91mgCarbohydrates: 0gSugar: 0gProtein: 39g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Serve this with
- Use the velveted chicken in a Chinese-style stir-fry with vegetables and rice or noodles. The tender chicken works brilliantly with broccoli, pak choi, capsicum and a glossy savoury sauce.
- Add it to a Chinese chicken noodle soup with rice noodles, greens and a light wonton-style broth. Velveting keeps the chicken beautifully soft and tender even when it’s poached directly in the soup.
- Serve in a simple chicken and vegetable stir-fry with my Sesame Cucumber Salad on the side. The cool, crisp cucumber is a lovely contrast to the hot, tender chicken and savoury sauce.
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The Secret to Better Chicken
Yesterday I went to visit my mother and my little sister, and made the three of us chicken schnitzel sandwiches for lunch. Nothing complicated, just a quick and easy lunch before heading home. But by the time I got back home, I had absolutely no energy left to leave the house again and buy something for dinner. I’m also seriously off takeaway at the moment. It’s become so expensive when you’re ordering for one person, and in Brisbane the quality is always going to be a bit hit and miss. I’d rather cook something simple at home than spend too much money and end up disappointed.
So I made what I tend to make on nights where my energy is low but I still want something delicious. Chinese chicken noodle soup. I had a tin of wonton soup broth, rice noodles, some pak choi and broccoli hiding in the fridge, and some chicken ready to velvet. It’s such an easy little dinner, but it always hits the spot. Warm broth, noodles, vegetables, and beautifully soft chicken. No fuss, and most importantly, no need to leave the house again.
And really, the velveted chicken is what makes it. If you’ve ever wondered why the chicken in your homemade stir-fries or Asian-style soups doesn’t quite taste or feel right, this may be why. Velveting gives the chicken that soft, tender texture you expect from a good Chinese restaurant, rather than the firmer, sometimes chewy texture you can get from simply slicing and cooking chicken breast. There’s science behind what the bicarbonate of soda is doing to the meat, but I’ll be honest, I don’t actually know what that science is. I just know that it works, and the difference is enormous.
Growing Up with Amazing Chinese Food
I grew up in Liverpool in Western Sydney, so I was absolutely blessed when it came to Chinese food. Incredible Chinese restaurants and takeaway were just part of normal life, and I think growing up around food like that gave me very specific expectations without me even realising it. Stir-fries, noodle soups, yum cha, all those gorgeous textures and flavours were familiar to me long before I ever thought about how they were actually created in the kitchen.
Then I grew up, moved away from Sydney, and started trying to recreate those dishes myself. And for years, my stir-fries were never quite right. The sauces could be good, the vegetables could be perfectly cooked, but the chicken always felt different. I’d slice it thinly, make sure I didn’t overcook it, try different marinades, and still couldn’t get that soft, almost silky texture I remembered. Eventually I largely stopped bothering with homemade stir-fries because I couldn’t work out what I was missing.
Then I started velveting the chicken, and suddenly it all made sense. It was one of those tiny kitchen discoveries that completely changes how you cook something. Now, if I’m making a stir-fry or adding chicken to a Chinese-style soup, I’ll almost always velvet it first. It’s such a small amount of extra preparation for such a noticeable difference, and I wish I’d known about it years earlier. I still love discovering little techniques like this, especially when they make the food I cook at home taste closer to the food I grew up with. Sometimes the difference between a dish feeling almost right and completely right is one ridiculously simple step you didn’t know you were missing.
Garlic Experiments and My Calm Girl Era
Today I’ve been pottering around the kitchen again. I made some aioli, which I’ll be giving to my little sister because I know she loves it, and I’ve also been experimenting with roasting naked garlic. By that I mean the bags of pre-peeled garlic cloves, rather than whole bulbs. I use roasted garlic paste a lot in my cooking, but roasting whole bulbs can be such messy business. I always feel like too much of the soft garlic gets trapped in the papery skins, so I’m seeing whether I can find a method that works just as well without all the waste and squeezing. Oh, and I made the Cashew Chicken you can see in the photos, but don’t expect a recipe for that particular lunch!
Otherwise, life has become very quiet lately, and honestly, I’m enjoying it. Giving up alcohol is going well, and I’ve also given up online dating for the foreseeable future. The other day, a guy got annoyed because I didn’t immediately compliment a selfie he’d sent me, despite knowing I had a migraine. He then became passive-aggressive later because I’d apparently “ghosted” him. I had a migraine. Looking at my phone was about the last thing I wanted to do, let alone managing someone else’s need for reassurance.
And I think that was enough to remind me why I’m taking a break from it all. Dating is officially on hiatus until I move to Sydney, and I’m very comfortable with that. I’ve got enough happening over the next nine months without adding dating apps to the mix. So for now, my weekends are for seeing Mum and my sister, cooking whatever I feel like cooking, hanging out with Lulu, and making myself Chinese chicken noodle soup when I don’t have the energy for anything more ambitious. After a fairly exhausting year, I’m quite happy plodding along quietly in my calm girl era. It suits me.
Frequently asked questions
Why does bicarbonate of soda make chicken tender? It raises the pH of the chicken’s surface, which breaks down the proteins and prevents them from tightening and contracting during cooking. The result is chicken that stays incredibly tender and juicy even over the high heat of a wok, rather than seizing up and becoming chewy the way untreated breast meat often does.
Do I really need to rinse it thoroughly? Yes, and this step is just as important as the velveting itself. Any residual bicarbonate of soda left on the surface will give the finished dish a metallic, soapy taste that ruins everything. Rinse under cold running water until the water runs completely clear, then pat completely dry before cooking.
Can I leave it for longer than 30 minutes? No. More time does not mean more tenderness. Beyond thirty minutes the bicarbonate of soda over-tenderises the meat and you end up with a mushy, unpleasant texture rather than the silky, firm result you’re after. Set a timer and stick to it.
Ingredient breakdown
Chicken breast
Finely sliced with the fatty bits removed, ideally around three to four millimetres thick, which is thin enough for the bicarbonate of soda to penetrate evenly and for the chicken to cook through quickly without drying out. Breast is the cut that benefits most from velveting because it’s the one most prone to drying out and becoming chewy over high heat. Thigh meat is naturally more forgiving but can also be velveted if that’s what you’re working with. Slice it as evenly as you can so every piece tenderises and cooks at the same rate.
Bicarbonate of soda
The only active ingredient in the velveting process and the one doing all the work. A small amount sprinkled over the chicken and mixed through by hand until every piece is evenly coated, then left in the fridge for exactly thirty minutes before being rinsed off completely. It works by raising the pH of the chicken’s surface and disrupting the protein structure in a way that keeps the meat tender and juicy during cooking rather than tight and dry. The rinsing step is what removes it entirely before cooking so none of that alkaline flavour makes it into the finished dish.
