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Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken

Crispy bite-sized breaded fried chicken with holy basil

Difficulty Hard
Time 12 min
Servings 5
Ingredients 11
Steps 10
Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken
Taiwanese Updated 5/31/2025

Ingredients

Measured from the catalog payload.

  • 2 lbs boneless chicken thigh
  • 1 cup holy basil
  • 1 cup tapioca flour
  • 4 cups cooking oil
  • 8 grams maggi magic sarap
  • 2 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon granulated white sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons five spice powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
  • 2 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons salt

Instructions

10 cooking steps

  1. Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces.
  2. Arrange sliced chicken in a mixing bowl and add the marinade ingredients. Mix well. Cover the bowl. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours.
  3. Combine 1 cup of tapioca flour with the marinated chicken. Sprinkle around 1 tablespoon of water and dredge the chicken until it gets completely coated. Let it stay for at least 3 minutes.
  4. Heat the oil to 300F.
  5. Deep fry the chicken for 6 to 7 minutes.
  6. Remove from the pot and arrange over a wire rack.
  7. Fry the basil for 1 minute.
  8. Place everything in a clean mixing bowl. (See notes3)
  9. Sprinkle salt and ground black pepper. Toss.
  10. Serve and enjoy!

Catalog details

Useful for browsing and sync.

Appetizer, Snack, Chicken chicken popcorn, popcorn chicken, street food Public recipe Revision 1

Recipe notes

  • Holy basil (also called tulsi in India or bai kraprao in Thailand) is a fragrant herb that’s commonly used in Southeast Asian cooking. It has a peppery, clove-like, slightly spicy flavor that’s quite different from the sweet and mild taste of Italian basil (aka “normal basil” in most kitchens). Aside from that, holy basil holds up well to frying while the normal basil wilts quickly, so it’s not really suitable in our Taiwanese Popcorn Chicken.
  • Chinese Five-Spice Powder is a classic seasoning mix made up of, you guessed it, five spices. First, we have star anise, which gives a sweet licorice aroma to our popcorn chicken. Next, cloves for the rich and slightly bitter balance. Cassia, or Chinese cinnamon, gives a sweet and spicy attack. Sichuan peppercorns are numbing and citrusy, and fennel seeds are sweet and aromatic. The spices don’t punch you in the face, it just lingers and leaves you wanting more.
  • If you toss holy basil with crispy fried popcorn chicken, it’ll become almost powdery . This is because after frying, they curl up, crisp up, and shatter like paper-thin chips. Now, once you toss those crispy holy basil bits with the fried chicken, the residual heat and movement from tossing make the basil crumble even more. They break down into those fragrant, almost powdery specks that coat the chicken.