Hainanese Chicken

One complete meal all in one tasty recipe. It’s easy steps but make sure to follow the recipe specially the steps on preparing and cooking the chicken. It is a must to exfoliate the chicken with salt to make the skin shiny. The ice bath is another key step to make the skin elastic and to trap the natural chicken juice inside. This is very comparable to the Filipino chicken tinola recipe that’s why I added a vegetable soup cooked from the chicken broth.

Hainanese Chicken

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Ingredients

  

• 1 whole chicken
• salt
• thinly sliced ginger
• scallion
• ice

Sauce

• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp finely grated ginger
• 1 tbsp fried garlic
• 4 tbsp wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 small lime
• 1/4 cup broth
• 1 tsp chilies (if desired)

Garlic rice

• 3 cups uncooked rice
• Chicken fat
• 1 tbsp garlic
• ginger
• Scallion
• 1 tsp Garlic salt
• 2 cups broth

Soup and vegetable (optional)

• 3 cups green papaya slices
• 3 cups pepper leaves

Garnishment (optional)

• cucumber slices
• chopped scallions

Instructions

 

For the chicken

• Exfoliate the chicken with salt to clean thoroughly. Remove fat and set aside for the garlic rice.
• Wash with cold water, pat dry and rub with salt. Set aside.
• Boil water, sliced ginger and scallion on a pot big enough to submerged the whole chicken ones the water start to boil. When the water starts boiling, add the whole chicken.
  
• Prepare an ice bath. Ones the water starts boiling, remove the chicken and drain the hot water from the cavity. Immediately soak in the ice bath until no longer hot.
  
• Return to the boiling pot for another 8 minutes or until the water is running a boil. Cover the pot and turn off the heat. Do not remove the cover and set it stand for 45 minutes.

For the Garlic Rice

• Clean the rice with water and set aside.
• Slice the chicken fat into small pieces. Stir fry with about 3 tbsp water until the chicken fat accumulates to about 3 tbsp.
  
• Stir in minced garlic, scallions and ginger until brown. Add the rice and let it absorb the fat and the flavor of the garlic and ginger. Add salt.
• Transfer to a rice cooker and add broth. Cook per the rice cooker instruction.

For the vegetable soup

• Boil the green papaya with remaining chicken broth until tender. Add pepper leaves and cook.
• Serve and garnish with scallion and cucumber slices