Reading Chinese Menus: Characters: 雞 — jī — chicken

[kake]

雞

I mentioned 雞 (jī) in my very first ever character post, on 肉 (ròu/meat). As I pointed out there, when you see 肉 on a menu with no further qualification, it almost always means pork, since pork is the default meat in most Chinese cuisines. One exception to this, as mentioned on Monday, is Xinjiang food — 肉 on a Xinjiang menu may well mean lamb, which elsewhere is specified as 羊肉 (yáng ròu).

I'm not aware, however, of any Chinese cuisine in which the default meat is chicken. In my experience, the use of chicken is always signalled explicitly with the character 雞 (jī), which may appear either alone or in combination with 肉 as 雞肉 (jī ròu). Note however that as sung points out in comments, 雞肉 appears very rarely on menus — you normally just see 雞 alone.

You might also see 雞 in combination with 蛋 (dàn/egg), so remember that 雞蛋 is not the meat of a chicken, but the egg of a chicken. As pulchritude mentions in the comments on my 肉 post, 雞蛋 is used instead of 蛋 in situations where 蛋 alone would sound unbalanced.

Finally, note that 田雞 (tían jī), literally "field chicken", is not a chicken, but a frog. You may also see this on menus as 田雞腿 (tián jī tuǐ), or frogs' legs, but often the 腿 is omitted since it's understood that the only part of the frog you generally eat is its legs.

Here are some common chicken dishes:

口水雞	kǒu shuǐ jī	"mouthwatering chicken", a cold dish of chicken in a spicy sauce
宮保雞丁	gōng bǎo jī dīng	Kung Po chicken (which may come in the original Sichuan style, or a Westernised version)
辣子雞	là zi jī	fried chicken with chillies; this may also appear as 飄香辣子雞 (piāo xiāng là zi jī/"drifting-fragrance chicken") or 辣子雞丁 (là zi jī dīng), or other variations
糯米雞	nuò mǐ jī	rice in lotus leaf/lo mai gai, a dim sum dish
怪味雞	guài wèi jī	"strange-flavour chicken", another cold dish
叫花雞	jiào huā jī	beggar's chicken — chicken baked whole in a clay (or sometimes dough) coating
醬油滷雞	jiàng yóu lǔ jī	chicken poached in soy sauce (see 3 Hungry Tummies' recipe)
豉油雞	chǐ yóu jī	the Cantonese term for 醬油滷雞 (note that although I give the pinyin here for consistency, the Cantonese would actually be something like si yau gai, or si jau gai)

雞:	jī	radical 172 (隹)	Cantodict	MandarinTools	YellowBridge	Zhongwen

Related posts:

• 肉 (ròu/meat),
• 涼菜 (liáng cài/cold dishes),
• 糯米雞 (nuò mǐ jī/rice in lotus leaf),
• 口水雞 (kǒu shuǐ jī/mouthwatering chicken),
• 大盤雞 (dà pán jī/big-plate chicken)

Comments

[eatlovenoodles.blogspot.com]

There's not enough Cantonese chicken dishes in your list so I'd like to add soy poached chicken. This is known as 豉油雞 in Cantonese or 醬油滷雞 jiang you lu ji in Mandarin.

http://3hungrytummies.blogspot.com/2010/06/aromatic-soy-poached-chicken.html

In practical terms you seldom say 'ji rou'. You just tend to say 'ji'. The term 'rou' is more used in conjunction with beef, pork and lamb rather than poultry.

[kake]

Thanks, edited! If you can give me the Cantonese transliteration for 豉油雞, I'll stick that in as well (I put the pinyin in for consistency).

I have actually made soy poached chicken a few times, from Sunflower's recipe, though sadly I burned my 鹵水 the last time I used it and so need to make more.

[pulchritude]

it's understood that the only part of the frog you generally eat is its legs.

That's...interesting to me, as I've always eaten the body as well. Granted, we'd also be buying live frogs to kill in the kitchen, so it's a different situation than restaurants overseas.

(Tangent: I saw some live frogs on sale at a Chinese supermarket in the US and really wanted to buy a bag! Alas I've never killed any myself, I still weep at the lost opportunity :()

[john]

An interesting thing I noted while in BJ was that if you ordered something jiding you got boneless bits of chicken, but just ji (as in tang cu ji) tended to include bones. Which actual Chinese people of course often just crunched up and ate, but which freaked us Westerners out somewhat.

[thekumquat]

Can you tell me how to get Chinese characters to display properly - I get squares with 4 letters/numbers instead on my laptop?

[kake]

Is the Wikipedia help page any use?

(Also, I sent you email re dim sum last week — let me know if it didn't turn up.)

[kake]

Oh, well, I could be wrong! Whenever I've eaten frogs in a restaurant, it's just been the legs, but I wouldn't say I've eaten them lots of times — probably less than ten times in my whole life, actually, so it could just be a coincidence. I've never cooked them at home.

I looked frogs up in The Oxford Companion to Food, which I recently bought for bob, and it does say there that it's "normally" (not "always") the hind legs that are eaten, so there could well be restaurants serving the body too. It does seem rather wasteful to only eat the legs; I suppose I sort of assumed that the rest of the body is inedible for some reason.

I reckon I should go to one of the restaurants offering 田雞 rather than 田雞腿, and see what they bring me :)

[kake]

Oh, interesting — I didn't realise that bones were ever edible. Aren't they quite sharp going down? I'm not sure I'd want to swallow one.

I do remember being told never ever to leave chicken bones where a cat could get to them, since they (cats) love them (bones), and they (bones) kill them (cats).

[john]

You spend a while crunching them up, and they tend to be well cooked so that they crunch up nicely, so they're not really sharp. It's still weird, though.

Cats, however, don't have molars, so have trouble with the crunching part.

[eatlovenoodles.blogspot.com]

I think the transliterated Cantonese is si yau gai. Unlike Mandarin and pinyin, I don't there is a definitive standard for tranliterating Cantonese.

[pulchritude]

Well, the hind legs are the meatiest parts...I actually used to um, purposefully not pick the body for this reason....

[shuripentu]

I strip and eat cartilage, but not actual bone... even my mother spits out the bone, after thoroughly stripping the meat. But then them northerners are odd. ;)

[shuripentu]

Apparently the Jyutping romanisation (which is what Cantodict <3 uses) would be si6 jau4 gai1; there are several romanisation systems but none of them have the overwhelming popularity that pinyin has, presumably because none of them have had the same level of official backing, I guess?

[kake]

That makes sense. doop tells me that he has eaten chicken bones, so maybe I'll get him to supervise me some time!

[kake]

Thanks — I've updated the post with your and Sung's transliterations. I thought I may as well put both in.