Chicken Manchurian sits under the heading “Chinese” on almost every menu in India – and nobody in China has heard of it. Crisp fried chicken balls in a dark, glossy sauce of garlic, ginger, green chilli and soy: the dish was invented in Mumbai in 1975 by a cook who started out making something Indian and changed direction halfway through. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Manchuria in north-east China.

At a glance

Name: chicken Manchurian, a cornerstone of Indo-Chinese cooking
Origin: Mumbai, 1975 – though the cuisine itself grew up in Kolkata
Flavour: salty and savoury, heavy on garlic, sharpened with vinegar, usually properly hot
Key ingredients: chicken, cornflour, garlic, ginger, green chilli, soy sauce, vinegar, spring onion
Eat it with: rice, fried rice or noodles

1975: one guest, one cook, one new dish

The story takes place at the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai. Working there in the mid-1970s was Nelson Wang, born in Kolkata in 1950, the son of a Chinese immigrant. Wang had arrived in Mumbai in 1974 with almost nothing and taken whatever kitchen work he could find. One evening, by his own account, a guest asked him for something that was not on the menu.

Wang began the way he would have begun an Indian dish: chopped garlic, ginger and green chilli in hot fat. But at the point where garam masala would normally go in, he reached for soy sauce instead. Cornflour followed, then the chicken. What came out of the pan had not existed anywhere before – and is now widely described as the most popular “Chinese” dish in India. In 1983 Wang struck out on his own and opened his own restaurant in Mumbai.

So why “Manchurian”?

The name is pure invention. Manchuria is a region in north-east China, and the dish has no connection to the way people cook there. It simply sounded Chinese. In India, “Manchurian” long ago stopped meaning a place and came to mean a method: anything chopped small, deep-fried and tossed in that garlic-and-soy sauce is Manchurian – chicken, cauliflower, paneer, fish or prawns alike.

From Kolkata to the whole country

Chicken Manchurian was born in Mumbai, but the cuisine behind it is a good two hundred years older and belongs to the east of the country. The first Chinese settlers reached Kolkata at the end of the 18th century and worked at a sugar mill. Hakka families from Guangdong province followed and built a trade in leather, settling on what was then the edge of the city – in Tangra, a stretch of marshland whose name is simply the Bengali word for tannery.

It started in small kitchens cooking for their own community. When the leather trade collapsed after the Indo-Chinese war of 1962, workshops and back yards turned into restaurants. The cooks adjusted to Indian guests as they went: more chilli, a great deal more garlic, thicker and bolder sauces in place of the restraint of classical Chinese cooking. Even the Indian version of Schezwan sauce – a thick paste of dried chillies, onion, ginger, garlic and oil – is generally credited to this period rather than to Sichuan.

From the 1970s onwards, cooks from Tangra moved to Mumbai and Delhi. Today Indo-Chinese food is everywhere in India: on street carts, at wedding buffets, in hotel dining rooms. It is eaten from Kashmir to Kerala, which makes it one of very few styles of cooking that genuinely works across the entire country.

Chicken Manchurian is not a Chinese dish with Indian spices – it is an Indian dish built with Chinese technique.

How chicken Manchurian is made

The dish is two pieces of work that stay apart until the very last second. That final second is where a good kitchen shows itself.

1. The chicken balls

The chicken is finely chopped and worked together with cornflour, a little plain flour, garlic, ginger, salt and pepper until the mixture holds its shape. The cornflour matters more than the flour here: it binds the mixture and later produces that thin, glassy crust. The balls go into moderately hot oil first, so they cook through without colouring too fast. Many cooks then lift them out, let them drain briefly and return them to hotter oil for a few seconds. That second fry drives the last moisture out of the surface – the trick behind a crust that does not go soft the moment it meets sauce.

2. The sauce

The wok needs to be genuinely hot and the oil kept to a minimum. Garlic, ginger and green chilli go in first and stay only seconds; they should perfume the oil, not brown in it. The white parts of the spring onions follow, often with diced pepper. Only then come the liquids: soy sauce for salt and colour, vinegar for lift, chilli sauce for heat, a pinch of sugar to hold it all together, and a splash of stock or water. Last, a slurry of cornflour and cold water is stirred into the bubbling sauce. It thickens in seconds – and gives the dish its shine.

3. Bringing them together

Now speed is everything. The fried balls go into the finished sauce, get one turn through it and leave the kitchen immediately, with the green tops of the spring onions scattered over. Let them sit and you end up with soft balls in a good sauce, which rather wastes the work. Chicken Manchurian is food that should travel straight from pan to table.

What does chicken Manchurian taste like?

Garlic arrives first, unmistakable and unapologetic. Behind it sits the dark saltiness of soy sauce, then vinegar keeping everything bright, and a little sugar smoothing the edges. Ginger gives its own tingling sharpness; the green chilli supplies the real heat.

The texture matters just as much: crisp outside, juicy inside, coated in a sauce that glazes rather than drowns. There is no cream, no yoghurt, no butter anywhere in it. If North Indian curries are what you know, this is something else entirely – hotter, saltier and far more sharply drawn.

Dry or with gravy – and what about chilli chicken?

Chicken Manchurian comes in two forms, separated by how much sauce there is:

Dry: the sauce is reduced until it only clings to the balls. This is the starter version, eaten with fingers or a fork.
Gravy: considerably more liquid, thickened harder – a main course that asks for rice or noodles.

It is often confused with chilli chicken, which sits on the same menus. The difference is in the detail: Manchurian uses shaped balls of chopped chicken, and its sauce is carried by soy and garlic. Chilli chicken keeps the meat in pieces, brings in more peppers and onions, and puts the chilli firmly in front.

The Manchurian family

Because “Manchurian” describes a technique, it transferred to almost anything:

Gobi Manchurian, made with cauliflower, is the best-known vegetarian version. In South India, and in Bengaluru above all, it is so well loved that many people name it before the chicken one.
Paneer Manchurian uses Indian fresh cheese, which firms up on the outside in the fryer while staying soft in the middle.
Veg Manchurian builds its balls from finely grated cabbage, carrot and spring onion – surprisingly close to the original, just without the meat.
Fish and prawns work too, but need a much shorter time in the oil.

Chicken Manchurian at Masalas

In our kitchen in Berlin-Köpenick the chicken balls come out of the fryer, go into the Manchurian sauce and head straight to your table or into the bag. Our meat is halal, and we cook without alcohol.

The heat is yours to choose. Plenty of our guests in Germany prefer it mild – but if you want it the way it is eaten in India, with real Indian spice, just tell us in the order note. We deliver around Köpenick, and you are welcome to collect.

At Masalas, Berlin-Köpenick