Air-Fryer Salt & Pepper Chicken

Salt-and-pepper chicken is the British-Chinese takeaway dish that sits next to crispy chilli beef in the canon — same crispy-coated protein, different finishing logic. Where chilli beef gets a sauce, salt-and-pepper chicken stays dry: the seasoning is a dust of five-spice, salt, and ground pepper applied at the end, plus a quick stir-fry of aromatics tumbled through. The result is crunchier, less sweet, more aromatic.

The dry seasoning is the soul of the dish. Sichuan peppercorns, if you have them, lend a faint floral numbness that distinguishes a "good" version from a "great" one; white pepper adds the heat without the black-pepper colour. You toast both briefly, grind together with salt, then dust over the chicken right after it comes out of the basket. The aromatics — sliced red chilli, garlic, ginger, spring onions, baby bok choy — get a quick stir-fry in the same pan.

The photo shows the assembled dish in its parchment-lined serving vessel: chunks of crisp chicken with visible cornflour coating, dark red chilli slices, pale-green bok choy stems, scallion rounds, all glistening slightly. There's a side of pickled cucumber for cutting through the spice. This is the kind of dish you make on a Friday night when the takeaway costs £15 and you've already paid for the ingredients.