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.

Hainan Chicken Rice

Here is a dish I cook about twice a month. There is not that much work involved, but does consume a fair bit of time because of the lengthy cooking process of the chicken, hence there is a lot of waiting around. It is certainly not a dish you can do after a long day at work and you want to cook a quick dinner. Even here, I have taken some short cuts because of time constraints.





To start with, the raw ingredients here are simple.. chicken, ginger, garlic and spring onions.



Bring them all to boil, then I add the chicken. If I had more time, I'd fry the ginger and garlic first and include the oil in the pot.



After 1 minute, including time to turn the chicken over as I did not have enough water so submerge the whole chicken (why? .. I'll explain later), the chicken has now gone white and I quickly put it under cold water to tighten up the skin.



Then I boil it again in the same pot.



After 15 mins, I turn off heat and leave it for another 30 mins. Then I give it another cold water bath!



Now, I lay it aside to dry. I ensure I keep it suspended in the air so that the whole surface dries. Some people may prefer to use a hook and hang it up.



Now, I boil down the stock. Earlier, I said I did not have enough water to submerge the whole chicken. That is because, the more water I use, the longer it takes to boil the stock down and I did not have the time. I also add a bit of Knorr's chicken stock here for additional flavour. Of course, I add salt, sugar and pepper to taste as well.



With the stock ready, I add it to my rice, with a blade of screwpine (pandan) leaf.



When the chicken is dry, I rub it with sesame oil, then chop it the Chinese way. The sauce is a mixture of sugar, stock, soy sauce, sesame oil, pepper and spring onions





The first pic of this blog showed the dry version of the dish. I prefer mine soaked with sauce like this!!

Char Siu with Hainan Chicken Rice

I cook have this dish about once a week. It is not labour intensive at all and you cannot buy an identical meal from a restaurant or takeaway in Manchester. For the Char Siu, I actually make it from scratch as I do not like the Hong Kong style red Char Siu you get from restaurants in the UK. I usually attempt to make the type of sweet dark Char Siu, like the ones I get back in Malaysia.

The marinade consists of Hoi Sin sauce, lemon juice 5 spice powder, salt, dark soy sauce and a large amount of honey to make it sweet.

I use shoulder steaks as they are nicely marbled with adequate but not too much fat. The thickness of the steak is VERY important as it will determine how dry or succulent your result is. The thickness of the steak will depend on how hot the grill is. I cook them on high heat, turning them over frequently until the outside is slightly charred but the inside is just cooked, but not overcooked.

During the cooking process, I scoop up the juice as a base for my sauce.

I simply mix it with sugar, water and soy sauce for a nice sweet sauce for the meat and rice.

And finally, the Char Siu! As with all roast / grilled meat, you should not cut it immediately or all the juice will leak out leaving it dry. Let it cool and the juice absorbed back evenly into the meat first (about 30 mins).

As for the rice, obviously I am unable to make it from scratch as I have no chicken in my meal to make the stock. So I take the simple solution and use the best readymade cooking sauce I can find. This sauce has a strong garlic taste, so I use a lot less than the recommeded amount.

I only need a heaped teaspoonful for 3 medium servings of rice.

I add some salt to taste, but most importantly, half a blade of pandan (screwpine) leaf, to give it that authentic fragrant. I can buy this easily in Manchester - about 60p for a dozen blades.

And here is the final result - Hainan Chicken Rice with Char Siu!

In future, I will write about how I make Hainan Chicken Rice from scratch, when I make a poached chicken (pak cham kei).