Hainanese Chicken Rice
Why watching TV hasn't been a total waste of time
Continuing to turn the world on its head, the inspiration for making this dish must wait whilst I share the recipe first. If you do attempt any of the recipes I publish, I would love some feedback on them - let me know if they make sense to follow along, and how they turn out!
Serves 4
Chicken
1 Whole Chicken
1 Leek
1 Large Onion
4/5 Spring Onions
Ginger (thumb size)
Salt
Water
Rice
300g Jasmine Rice
Garlic (3/4 cloves)
Ginger (thumb size piece)
Vegetable Oil
Sweetened Soy Sauce
50ml Soy Sauce
50ml Water
Sugar (1 tbsp)
To Serve
Chilli Sauce (Sambal or whichever is your favourite)
Sliced Cucumber
1. Trim off excess skin (you’ll use this later), cover the chicken with salt, and rub into the skin. Rinse off and add to a large pot. Roughly chop the leeks, onions, spring onions and ginger (not need to peel), add to the pot and cover with water so that the chicken is fully submerged. Bring to a boil and then immediately reduce to a simmer for roughly 45 mins until the chicken is cooked through (I prefer to use a thermometer to check, the chicken should be 74 degrees celsius in its thickest part).
2. Remove chicken from pot and immediately put into an ice bath to cool the chicken and shock the skin. Return the stock to a boil and reduce rapidly for 30 mins. Once the chicken is cool, remove from ice bath and put onto board and carve (pretty good tutorial here). Allow the stock to cool slightly so that the fat separates from the liquid.
3. Soak and wash the rice until the water runs clear and set aside. Blitz the ginger and garlic together with a bit of oil to form a paste. Chop up the reserved chicken skin, and fry gently in a saucepan to render the fat out. Add more fat from the cooled stock, increase the heat to medium high and add the ginger and garlic to cook for a couple of minutes. Once that is fragrant, add the rice, fry for a couple of minutes longer. Then add 450ml of stock (check the instructions on your rice for the correct ratios - this is what works for me), bring to a boil and then reduce to medium low and cover for 15-20 mins until all the water has been absorbed.
4. Whilst the rice is cooking, combine the soy sauce, water and sugar to a small saucepan until it thickens and remove from the heat. Once the time is up take your rice off the heat, but leave covered for another 10 mins.
5. Slice the cucumber and decant your chilli sauce. Plate some chicken and cover in the soy sauce, and add rice to the plate.
For as long as I can remember I’ve watched food programmes on TV from the early days of Ready Steady Cook (both Fern Britton and Ainsley Harriott eras) and Lloyd Grossman’s Masterchef, through the Jamie Oliver revolution and now The Great British Menu, and Masterchef Australia (I can’t stress enough how much better it is than the UK version, as seeing that shouty bespectacled boiled egg raises my blood pressure) to name but a few.
Along the way these programmes have taught me a lot about food; rolling a lime on a board release will release more juice when you cut it, pasta water needs to be heavily salted, and having a short sighted blancmange tapping his watch and telling you to get a move on probably isn’t as inspiring as him and his mate think it is.
But perhaps the biggest influence on me over the last couple of years has been the food world of YouTube. Whilst I love collecting recipe books for inspiration and reading about food, what draws me into these videos is pretty straightforward - it allows me to see how a recipe should be made and follow along at my own pace - pausing and rewinding and rewatching, if I’m trying to recreate a recipe, or just to understand the steps and how complicated something might be to make.
Obviously this has been possible with Sky+ for many years, but often TV chefs recipes won’t show the whole process in full. They want you to buy their books, for those putting their content online, they want you to click through, and watch all the way through to maximise their revenues. I’m willing to follow whichever route of cynical capitalism allows me to enhance my own skills.
Whilst their are many videos for Hainanese Chicken Rice, the first time I’d seen, or even really heard of it was from this video from SortedFood. It ticked all the right boxes for me - the concept of the poached chicken with silky skin served at room temperature intrigued me, there was a new skill to learn in how to carve the chicken for the dish, and ultimately a dish that felt achievable to make, with all the ingredients already familiar to me. It is also very cost effective - out of the full chicken, a few herbs and onions and rice you get several meals.
The biggest takeaway from this however is just how good the rice is - fragrant with garlic and ginger, plus with the flavour from the chicken fat and stock, it was a revelation. In the Singapore episode of 'Somebody Feed Phil’, this rice is described as the king, and the chicken a bonus, which is exactly right. There are many versions of recipes for this on YouTube, I would strongly recommend seeking them out and giving this a go. Don’t forget whilst you’re there to smash that Like button and subscribe.