Hainanese Chicken Rice

- Serves 4

What is it about Hainanese chicken rice that makes it so special? I made this dish for the first time many years ago in Shanghai. Our lovely Ayi Xiao Xu, on one of her yearly trips back home during CNY, decided that she wanted to bring me back a live, home-grown, free-range chicken from her village in Anhui, and that she would butcher the poor bird in our kitchen. I gasped in horror but didn’t want to be rude by declining her gift and so we concluded that she would kill it just before leaving her village.

Of course, the dead bird wouldn’t have survived the long journey in the heat inside the car during the harsh winter months of Northern China and so Xiao Xu improvised on the spot. The bird’s feet were tied together with string, and the string tightly tucked in the rolled up window of her car, with the body comfortably hanging outside the window at sub-zero temperatures, you know like an open-air freezer ❄️. One can only imagine the frozen bird swaying upside down in the cool wind for 6-8 hours before landing on our kitchen counter.

I was strictly instructed not to make curry with this beautiful creature and instead use it for a dish where I would be able to enjoy its full flavor and so that was my first attempt at making “Chicken-Rice”. Of course, there is the tangy freshly-made chili sauce, pungent ginger and perfectly cooked rice that play part in making this dish so special, but the most important ingredient here is a good, organic, free-range chicken! Now, whether you get one from Anhui or catch one at Botanic Gardens, that’s up to you 😉. Enjoy the recipe!

Ingredients for Hainanese Chicken Rice

For the chicken:
1 whole chicken preferably free-range organic chicken (Kampong Chicken) - neck intact, feet separated with nails trimmed
1 small thumb Bentong ginger cleaned and bruised
2 stalks spring onion, washed and chopped into matchsticks
1 tooth pick
10 cups or 2.5L quality chicken stock, adjust according to the size of the chicken
4 blades pandan leaves
1 carrot roughly chopped
2 + 1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Sichuan peppercorn, optional
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, optional
1 star anise, optional
1 bay leaf, optional
10 cups or 2.5L cold water plus ice, generously seasoned with salt
1-2 tablespoons sesame oil, for rubbing on chicken
1 Japanese cucumber, halved and sliced diagonally
Sweet dark soy sauce, for serving
Few sprigs coriander, for garnish

For the rice:
2 cups (280g) Jasmine rice, soaked in water for 20 minutes then drained (you can also use a mixture of 45g glutinous rice and 235g Jasmine rice - make sure you soak the glutinous rice in water for at least 2-3 hours)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
70 g chicken fats
3 cloves finely chopped garlic
3 finely chopped shallots
400g chicken broth
4 blades pandan leaves
1 inch Bentong ginger, cleaned and bruised
1/4 tsp salt, or to taste

For soy sauce dressing:
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
2 tablespoons chicken broth
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon garlic and shallot oil (as prepared for the rice)

For the ginger sauce:
60g young ginger - chopped finely (can increase to 90g for stronger flavor)
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon concentrated chicken stock
100ml chicken stock

For chicken rice chilli sauce:
90 g large red chilies (you may include 2-3 bird's eye chili for heat)
15 g garlic
50 g young ginger
1 teaspoon salt
1.5 teaspoons sugar
50 ml chicken broth
60 ml lime juice or lemon juice or kalamasi juice, or to taste

Recipe

For the chicken

Wash chicken, drain well, remove visible fat from chicken and set aside for rice. Using 2 teaspoons of salt as scrub, rub the salt all over the chicken for smooth looking skin. Stuff ginger and spring onion into the chicken's cavity. Seal the cavity using a tooth pick to prevent the ginger and spring onion from falling out.
In a not too large stockpot which fits the chicken perfectly, boil the chicken stock (enough to cover the whole chicken) together with pandan leaves, carrot, chicken feet, and salt. Add whole spices. Hold the chicken by the neck and ladle hot stock over its body to tighten the skin. (Alternatively, some chefs blanche the chicken in hot water for 2 minutes, rinse it with tap water then pop it back in the stock pot)
Submerge the whole chicken, breast side down in boiling stock, making sure there is just enough stock covering the chicken. Cook for 30 minutes on low-medium flame. After 30 minutes, turn off the heat, cover and let it rest for another 30 minutes.
Check doneness by poking the chicken near the thigh joint. Your chicken is cooked when the juices run clear. Remove chicken and plunge it into prepared cold water at once for 10 minutes; this will result in a lovely, gelatinous skin that Hainanese chicken is famous for. Keep the chicken broth for later use. 
Drain the chicken, discard ginger and spring onion from the cavity and rub all over with sesame oil to prevent drying out. Set it aside to cool before chopping it neatly into desired serving size.

For the rice

On low-medium heat, render chicken fat in a large saucepan along with oil. Next, add chopped shallots and garlic and fry till fragrant and golden in color. Set aside 1 tablespoon of this oil for the soy-sauce dressing. Add rice to the rest of the oil and stir well. Transfer the rice mixture into a rice cooker. (To continue cooking the rice in the saucepan, simply use 1.5 times stock to the volume of rice – 540g)
Once transferred, add 400g chicken broth, pandan leaves, ginger, and salt into rice mixture. Cook according to rice cooker's manual instructions. Discard flavorings, fluff up the rice and serve hot. (Once cooked, the rice will continue to brown in the rice cooker because of the high oil content in it, therefore it is best to remove it and place in an insulated container until ready to serve)

For soy sauce dressing

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl - drizzle over chicken when serving.

For the ginger sauce

Place the first four ingredients in a food processor, then adding little stock liquid at a time, blend until fine as per your desired consistency.

For chicken rice chilli sauce

For the chilli sauce, pound the chilli, ginger, garlic, sugar and salt together in a mortar and pestle until very smooth.
Pounding chilli can take some time so to speed up the process you can start it in a blender or food processor and pound to finish, or grate the ingredients into the mortar using a rasp grater.
Add the boiling stock to the pounded mixture. You can vary the amount of stock depending on the consistency of the chilli sauce you’re after.
Stir in the lime juice, then adjust the seasoning if necessary.

To serve chicken rice

Line a serving plate with cucumber slices.
Arrange chicken pieces on top, pour in the prepared soy sauce dressing before garnishing with cilantro. Serve with chicken rice, chicken broth, ginger sauce, chili sauce, and sweet dark soy sauce.
Any left-over chicken broth can be served as side soup, garnish with cilantro or chopped spring onion.