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Hot Oil Over Hand-Shredded Chicken (November 6, 2025). Photo by Louie Liang.
From Sichuan Bang Bang Chicken to Puebla Tinga: What Dishes Carry Across Cultures
From Sichuan Bang Bang Chicken to Puebla Tinga: What Dishes Carry Across Cultures
by Louie Liang
Every time my mom makes bang bang chicken, the whole kitchen turns into a small firework show. Zzzzz. The pans pop and hiss the moment she pours smoking chili oil over a mound of hand-shredded chicken. Hot oil hits cold meat; red runs down white. Steam jumps up. The room fills with garlic and the numbing buzz of Sichuan pepper. One sound like this, and we all know dinner is ready. Only later, when I left home for college in the U.S., did I realize that this dish—and even the way we name it—carries stories and regional culture.
That scene usually happens on holidays or slow weekends. We buy a big pack of chicken thighs, simmer them with ginger and scallions, then chill the meat in cold water so it stays tender and springy. She always gives me the “safe” and fun jobs: I pull the meat from the bones and tear it into thin ribbons. Next comes the “bang-bang” moment: I use a thick wooden stick to pound the pieces so the fibers loosen and can soak up more of the sauce. My mom keeps the last step for herself. She says the hot oil is too dangerous for me, so she stands closest to the stove, heating the oil, mixing the seasonings, and finally pouring everything over the chicken in one careful motion. The whole process usually takes up most of an afternoon, and she is a lawyer whose time is literally counted in billable hours. She could easily ask someone else to cook, but instead she chooses to spend that time with me in the kitchen, making my favorite dish by hand.
Sichuan Bang Bang Chicken with Rice and Cucumber (November 6, 2025). Photo by Louie Liang.
At home, we never gave the dish a special name; it was simply hand-shredded chicken. Only when I came to the U.S. for college did the English names on menus start to stand out to me. The shredded chicken I grew up with might appear as “strange-flavor shredded chicken” on one menu and “bang bang chicken” on another. In a 2024 article on the English translation of Sichuan dish names, translation scholar Jin Zhou notes that literal versions like “strange-flavor shredded chicken,” while straightforward, “lack cultural and emotional symbolism” (Zhou). I see what Zhou means when I picture that phrase on a menu: it says nothing about the slow simmering, or the pounding of the meat. “Bang bang chicken,” a more common and more vivid name, pulls the method into the title and makes people curious: “why would you bang cooked chicken at all?” Food writer Cathy Erway explains in TASTE (a food culture magazine) that this pounding technique has been “immortalized” in its “easy to remember name” (Erway). For me, that name is not just catchy branding; it always keeps a small piece of my mom’s kitchen sounds and our regional food culture inside English words.
Tinga served at North Quad Dining Hall (November 11th, 2025). Photo by Louie Liang.
I first realized how different “shredded chicken” could look outside my region when I stumbled upon another version at the North Quad dining hall. The sign said tinga de pollo, and the meat was stewed in a deep red sauce—hot, smoky, and nothing like the cold, pounded chicken I grew up with. Later, I learned that tinga comes from Puebla, Mexico. As one article from Salsaology explains, it “was developed during the colonial period, when Spanish flavors and cooking techniques mixed with indigenous ingredients” (“What is Tinga?”). That history sits inside the dish just as much as the tomatoes, onions, and chipotle that shape its flavor. The contrast with bang bang chicken is clear: tinga is cooked down in sauce, served hot, and built from colonial and regional blending, while my Sichuan version is cold, loosened by pounding, and tossed in chile oil, black vinegar, toasted sesame paste, and tingly peppercorns. Same idea of “shredded chicken,” but completely different tools, seasonings, and histories.
Seeing bang bang chicken and tinga taught me something simple but important: the same technique—shredding chicken—can become completely different depending on the hands, history, and place behind it. When these dishes appear in English language and the land of the U.S. under the same words, “shredded chicken,” the names flatten their paths, but the flavors and memories remind us that food is never just food. It is a record of where it comes from, and of the people who made it matter.
Works Cited
Erway, Cathy. “Bang Bang Chicken’s Identity Crisis.” TASTE, Penguin Random House, 23 Mar. 2020, tastecooking.com/bang-bang-chickens-identity-crisis/. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.
Liang, Louie. Photo of Hot Oil Over Hand-Shredded Chicken. 6 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.
Liang, Louie. Photo of Sichuan Hand-Shredded Chicken with Rice and Cucumber. 6 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.
Liang, Louie. Photo of Tinga served at North Quad Dining Hall. 11 Nov. 2025. Author’s personal collection.
“What is Tinga? It’s Rich History & the Easiest Chicken Tinga Recipe.” Salsaology, 19 Mar. 2025, salsaology.com/blogs/news/what-is-tinga-its-rich-history-the-easiest-chicken-tinga-recipe. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.
Zhou, Jin. “A Comparative Analysis of the English Translation of Sichuan Cuisine Dish Names in Enjoy Culinary Delights and Sichuan (China) Cuisine Under the Guidance of Skopos Theory.” Economic Society and Humanities, vol. 1, no. 11, 2024, pp. 42–50. https://doi.org/10.62381/E244B06. Accessed 6 Nov. 2025.
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