Hainanese Chicken Rice

Hainanese Chicken Rice is one of my favourite. When home in Penang, it serves as an afternoon lunch. I always return to the same favourite stalls for chicken rice. It's always the soft chicken meat, and springy chicken skin with the flavourful chicken rice topped with appetising dipping sauce that makes one return for more.

Living in London, it's not easy to find this dish. A friend made it one day and shared her tips on cooking. After tasting it, it's made me look up some recipes online for inspiration.

The recipe captured below might look lengthy and challenging, however it's rather easy once you get the procedure right. I'd definitely recommend an attempt as you can achieve a wholesome meal derived from one whole chicken!

Chicken

Ingredients:
• 1 whole corn fed chicken - given good scrub with generous amount of sea salt
• 1 inch ginger sliced into thins
3-4 springs of spring onion chopped into 3 or 4 sections
• Salt for seasoning
• 1 full stock pot of water
• 1 stock pot of ice bath

Method:
• Bring the full stock pot of water to boil.
• Prepare chicken by giving it a good spa treatment of rigorous salt scrubbing. If required, scrub several times, rinse away peeling skin and scrub again to achieve taut gleaming skin.
• Season chicken inside out and stuff it with ginger and spring onions.
• Slowly immerse whole chicken in boiling water, let it bring to boil again then immediately turn heat low enough to simmer throughout cooking time (approximately 2hours).
• As the chicken simmers in the stock pot, gradually sift / ladle out the scummy residue that surface.
• There are two ways one could use to determine when the chicken is done - a) use a cooking termometer to measure the temperature is 76 degree celsius (170 farenheit) at the thickest part of the chicken (in between the thighs not touching bones); b) reaching 2hours cooking time and a little beyond making sure it's at such a slow simmer that bubbles merely break through the surface.
• Carefully bring chicken out from stock pot, immerse fully into ice bath to stop cooking process and tightens chicken skin. This is key to getting the best skin texture for Hainanese Chicken Rice!
• Bring chicken out from ice bath, set aside.
• Keep remainder chicken stock in stock pot for use in making the rice, beansprouts, and soup for serving with the dish.
• When all other preparation is complete, just before serving, start chopping up or boning the chicken into nicely proportioned bite size slices onto serving dish.

Rice

Ingredients:
• 3 cups rice, washed and drained, set aside
• 2 tablespoon cooking oil
• 1 teaspoon sesame seed oil
• Chicken stock from poaching chicken
• 3-4 Pandan leaves, washed, divided and knotted
• Garlic minced - approximate amount based on cups of rice to cook
• Ginger minced - approximate amount based on cups of rice to cook

Method - with rice cooker:
• Heat up cooking oil in wok at medium-high heat, gently fry ginger and garlic until fragrant, but not burning it.
• Add rice, stir to mix thoroughly, cook for 2 mins.
• Ladle chicken stock into rice cooker, scoop up rice from wok, add sesame seed oil and pandan leaves then turn rice cooker on to cook.
• The frying step is meant to bring more flavour to the rice. It is also fine to skip the frying step if time is limited.

Learn how to cook rice over the stove here.


Whilst the rice is cooking, start preparing the dipping sauces, blanch beansprouts, and carve the chicken.

Dipping Sauces

Penang Inspired Chilli Sauce - Ingredients:
• 1 inch ginger roughly chopped up
• 3-4 cloves garlic peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 lemon grass, cut into small sections
• 1 red chilli, desseeded and roughly chopped
• 2-3 birds eye chilli, roughly chopped
• 2-3 lime juice (1 whole lemon juice can be used as a substitute if desperate)
• Sugar and salt to season

Method:
• Put ginger, garlic, lemon grass, chillies, lime juice all into a blender. Give it a quick blend once or twice, just enough to shred up the ingredients, but not overly processed.
• Pour chilli mix out into sauce dipping bowl, add sugar and salt to season.

Dark Soya Sauce Dip - Ingredients:
• 2-3 birds eye chilli, roughly chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic peeled and minced
• Desired amount of sweet dark soya sauce or just enough to cover the chilli and garlic mix

Method:
• Add chillies and garlic into sauce dipping bowl, top it up with sweet dark soya sauce.

Blanched Beansprouts

Ingredients:
• 1 packet of beansprouts, washed and drained
• 2-3 sprigs spring onion chopped into small chunks
• 1-2 ladles of stock from poaching chicken
• Medium pot of water bring to boil
• A few dashes of soya sauce and sesame seed oil to season

Method:
• Gauging when rice is just about ready, in a medium pot bring water to the boil.
• Add beansprouts into water and bring to the boil again.
• Cook for 2-3 minutes, or until beansprouts turn slightly translucent, yet still crunchy to the bite.
• Turn off the heat and dish out beansprouts into serving dish.
• Ladle over the chicken stock, season with soya sauce and sesame oil.
• Garnish with spring onion and serve.

If served as a buffet style dish, you can very well have all chicken in one big dish. If serving individually, below is a suggested method. Hope you have fun with this!