Hainanese Chicken Rice
I’ve been dreaming of Singapore in this dark timeline.
There is only one Singapore/Malay restaurant in Chicago, maybe 2 if you count suburbs? They’re too far for delivery and, sadly, half the food on the menu is like Chinese-American or Thai-American take out. The laksa also looks pretty suspect. So I am holding off for now.
Instead, I made my own, using a nice and overpriced Slagel Farm chicken. Because I am never satisfied by my own work so expectations are already low. Just trying to bring back some fond memories, nothing more.
I don’t really know how to make Hainanese Chicken Rice. There isn’t a good source of Singaporean food online that I really trust. Six years ago, Noah and I made it together once without having tried the real deal, and it was underwhelming. This time, I sort of combined lots of different information based on my memories.
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Cooking the chicken
I feel like chicken rice is all about a rich and pure chicken stock. The stock is the backbone of every component of this dish, and without it the dish is nothing. I can only imagine that the stalls must build such a flavorful broth just from poaching lots of chickens in the same bath of broth, and just keep topping it off as needed.
For my sad home version, I started by making chicken broth with 2 cornish game hens to give my broth a head start, but it still won’t be the same.
Trim the chicken of all excess fat, and render (low heat, a splash of water to start) out all the fat. Reserve the fat for rice.
Stuff into the cavity of the chicken for poaching:
3# chicken, a lean flavorful one essential
5cm ginger, sliced into rings, lightly smashed
1 green onion, lightly smashed
Season the water, less than for pasta; just a pleasant light saltiness. 1/2tsp msg optional.
Bring the water up to a strong simmer, and ladle the hot water over the skin of the chicken. This step is optional, but supposedly it helps to tighten the skin of the chicken so it doesn’t tear as easily later.
Drop the chicken in the pot. Keep the temp at 165F-170F; if too hot, add some cold water. Poach in this temperature range for 30-40 minutes, or until chicken registers as done (or at 165F; lower for more succulent chicken, but pls don’t sue me if you die).
There are lots of ways to cook chicken “gently” for this application, like boiling for 10min, then turning off the heat, and leave it to poach off heat. But if you boil for even 10min, the breast sounds like it would get tough, so I baby’d the hell out of my chicken.
I almost sous vided the whole chicken, but I wanted lots of chicken broth for all the steps that follow, so I ruled it out. Maybe next time, if I had an extra chicken or some spare bones, I could make a broth separately for all the other uses, and just sous vide the chicken with the aromatics. That would probably be the best of both worlds!
Shock in ice bath until cool enough to touch. Ice bath is also optional, but again is supposed to help tighten the skin.
Save the broth.
Cooking the rice:
Saute until fragrant:
2T chicken fat, from above
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 shallot, minced
Add and toast until fragrant:
350g jasmine rice, rinsed (I think jasmine rice has a better aroma for this. I used medium grain because it’s what I had.)
a dash of white pepper
Transfer to a rice cooker, and add:
chicken broth (from above) in place of liquid for the rice (about 2 rice cups)
4ish pandan leaves, tied into a bouquet
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp salt
chicken solids from rendering fat, chopped to small pieces
Can even do it in the same pan that rice was toasted in. But my rice cooker makes way more perfect rice than me.
The sauces: ginger sauce, seasoned soy sauce, and chili sauce
Soy to pour over the chicken, ginger sauce, and chili sauce made with serranos because I couldn’t find mild reds at the the store
Ginger sauce:
Pound in mortar and pestle, or blitz in food processor:
30g ginger
1 scallion
Add to ginger paste:
75mL chicken stock
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
salt, to taste
Seasoned soy sauce:
1 Tbsp seasme oil
1-2 Tbsp soy sauce
1 Tbsp shaoxing wine
pinch or two sugar
1 cup chicken stock (from above)
Chili sauce:
Blitz or pound:
5-6 thai chilies, or more to taste
some mild red chilies like fresnos, a handful
25g ginger
6-8 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 tsp sugar
chicken fat, if any left
Add to paste:
1/2 cup chicken stock (if no more chicken fat left, just try to skim soup from the top of the pot, along with the fat)
1/4 cup calamansi lime juice, or to taste
To chop the chicken rice for serving, use confident up and down chops with a cleaver, not gentle saws.
Serve chopped, bone in, with cucumber slices and cilantro, and the sauces.
Notes:
One logistical error I ran into was that I wanted to poach in a concentrated and flavorful liquid, but I needed more liquid to cover my chicken completely. I didn’t photograph my workaround, but it didn’t work well and parts of the chicken were still not submerged. Definitely made cooking more annoying. Submerge chicken all the way!
Some stalls served something similar to kecap manis instead of soaking the chicken in a pool of seasoned soy sauce. I don’t own kecap manis, but I didn’t think I needed it with this version.
I used soy sauce for my rice; I think I must have misread something? Anyway, I regret it. It was delicious rice, but the soy flavor reminded me too much of claypot chicken w/ rice, instead of usual fragrant rice of chicken rice.
Recipes I took from:
This malay-haianese lady, for chicken cooking options, and some insight on “the old days” version of the dish.
Spice n Pans, lots of popular S’pore dishes I’ll never try to recreate, but it’s still fun to watch and reminsce
Adam Liaw, didn’t take much away from this one, except that if this guy is calling for pandan leaves, then it must be pretty key, since his videos seem targeted toward Westerners.
Pailin’s Kitchen, for the chicken poaching technique.