Hainan Chicken Rice with Roast Chicken

Its been 4 months since my last blog. Hope I have not lost too many readers as I have sort of neglected this blog due to other interests I have discovered. However, I am still as interested in cooking and eating as ever. Just that I seem to have a bit less time to blog about them now. But anyway, here is an update on one of my favourite dishes.

Back in 2008, I wrote a comprehensive guide to how I cook Hainan Chicken Rice with lots of images. Sadly, the host have now taken all the pics down. One day, I will upload them again. But in the meantime, here is the link anyway. You will get the idea even if you just read the text.

Click here.

This blog basically is the same except that the chicken is actually roasted instead of poached.

Normally a chicken lasts 2 days for us. On the second day, I reheat the chicken in the microwave, let it cool a bit and then chop it. On this occassion, I decided to roast the chicken for the second day. This adds extra taste to it to compensate the loss of smooth texture as a result of reheating.

All I do is rub a mixture of dark soy, honey, 5 spice, salt and pepper to the dry cold chicken. Then let it dry at room temp for an hour. After that, put in a VERY hot oven, so that it cooks the surface quickly and not cook the inside for too long. After all , the chicken is already cooked.

These are the results.

Btw, I glazed the skin with its own fat dripping, but not too much to retain some form of crispiness. Commercially, the vendors would bathe the skin with hot oil to get an even golden brown colouring.