laser chicken n.

Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for two reasons: It can zap you just like a laser, and the sauce has a red color reminiscent of some laser beams. The dish has also been called `gunpowder chicken'.

In a variation on this theme, it is reported that some Australian hackers have redesignated the common dish `lemon chicken' as `Chernobyl Chicken'. The name is derived from the color of the sauce, which is considered bright enough to glow in the dark (as, mythically, do some of the inhabitants of Chernobyl).

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.