Recipe Reeeemix: Hainanese Chicken Rice (AKA Chicken with Scallion-Ginger Sauce)

I love it when people insist that chicken doesn't taste like chicken anymore.  Maybe it's because I wasn't raised on a farm, and never had to opportunity to purchase a chicken in the golden era of non-industrialized food.

Or maaaaybe people just don't know how to cook chicken.

I'm not saying that all chickens are created equal--if you can come up with the scratch to buy free-range sustainable boutique chicken at $7 a pound, then by all means, please do support that farmer.  I, however, take a certain glee in scooping up family packs of thighs and drumsticks at my local megamart.

That your chicken needs to be expensive, or preciously tended to, or expertly timed in order to taste good is a load of bull.  Family FN Foodie does have a penchant for meats of a darker, sultrier nature (duck, beef, fatty pork and lamb), and often eschews chicken in restaurants, but there's one chicken dish that we not only order every time it's offered, we order it in concert.

I speak of the humble Hainanese Chicken Rice.  Beloved by Chinese people at large (and favored by Singaporeans and Malaysians in particular) it's straightforward comfort food: Gently poached chicken served over rice made from its own stock, served with a ginger-based dipping sauce and a chili sauce for ooomph.

No fancy fusion, glitz or sideshows.  Just pull-apart chicken that tastes like chicken, on top of chicken-flavored rice.  Sounds like a snooze, but trust me--the anise-tinted stock steeped into jasmine rice is soothingly savory, and everything you want out of flavored rice packets that you just can't get without boiling bones.

At a bit over 90 minutes from start to finish, this isn't a quickie dinner, but a lot of the time elapsed isn't active cooking or prep time, so this is a great meal for a lazy Sunday (yielding grand leftovers for the work week...you'll be the girl/boy to hate in the microwave conga line at work).

Props to Madame La Bittman for covering this dish in the NYT and producing a great, accessible recipe for something I've always thought of as restaurant food, but here's a little nitpicking on his research: This is a not a dish of Chinese-proper origin, or even from the people of Hainan in particular, despite its name.  It's a feat of nyonya cooking, a regional dish borne distinctly south of China, where ethnic Chinese cuisine blends with Malay, Indonesian and Southeast Asian influences. 

It's arguably the national dish of Singapore, and they're more than happy to throw down about it the way New Yorkers do about pizza.  Sure, you'll find it in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan (or, in Bittman's case, served up by Cantonese folks in San Gabriel)--but that's not where it's from.

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Hainanese Chicken Rice (AKA Chicken with Scallion-Ginger Sauce)

Adapted by An Effing Foodie
Base recipe by Mark Bittman, NYT

Yield: 4 to 8 servings.

Ingredients:

For the chicken and rice:

• 8 skin-on chicken pieces, preferably thighs and drumsticks
• 4-5 coins ginger (about 1/4-inch, on the round or bias)
• 6-7 cloves smashed garlic, plus 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 pod star anise
• 1/4 cup peanut oil (any neutral oil, like corn or canola)
• 3 shallots, roughly chopped (I used 1/2 a medium onion + the minced whites of 1 bunch of scallions)
• 2 cups long-grain rice, washed, preferably jasmine
• Salt and white pepper, to taste
• Thai/Vietnamese fish sauce, to taste

For the dipping sauce:

• 1/4 cup oil (Bittman went with neutral oil, but I went with a mix of sesame, chili oil, and a little olive oil)
• 1 bunch scallions, green parts, minced
• 1 tablespoon ginger, minced
• Salt and white pepper, to taste
• Thai/Vietnamese fish sauce, to taste

For serving:

• 2 cucumbers, peeled and sliced
• 2 tomatoes, sliced
• Cilantro leaves, chopped
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• Sriracha

Method:

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add chicken to pot along with smashed garlic, sliced ginger and whole anise pod. Bird should be completely submerged, but only just. Cover, reduce heat to medium, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Turn off heat and cover; let bird remain in water for 45 minutes to an hour, or until it is cooked through. (I used 8 drumsticks, and standing for 45 minutes worked just fine.)

Remove chicken from pot and keep it covered at room temperature--strain and reserve produced stock.

Put 1/4-cup oil in a skillet over medium heat; you may add trimmed chicken fat to this also. When oil is hot, add remaining garlic, along with shallots; cook, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.

Add rice and cook, stirring, until glossy, 2-3 minutes. Add 4 cups reserved chicken stock and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cover. Cook for about 20 minutes, until rice has absorbed all liquid.

(I followed this, and my rice came out on the soft side--nothing wrong with this, but if you want the firmer chicken rice you'd find in restaurants, you may want to use a little less than 4 cups of stock.)

Season rice with fish sauce and pepper.

While the rice is cooking, make a dipping sauce with the 1/4 cup oil, ginger, scallions.  Season with salt, fish sauce and pepper, to taste.

Shred or chop chicken (discarding skin if you wish--I did not). Put rice on a large platter and mound chicken on top of it; decorate platter with cucumbers, tomatoes, remaining scallions and cilantro.

Sprinkle the 2 TBSP sesame oil, salt and pepper over all and serve with dipping sauce and Sriracha. 

(And, just in case you don't feel like cooking, they serve Hainanese chicken rice at Skyway and Nyonya restaurants in Manhattan.  Get some roti canai too, while you're at it!)

Thank you kindly to The Man, SSFL, and all the sweet Newark eaters, for allowing me to use you as chicken rice guinea pigs!

Comments

[Yuan Xiao Recipe]

Wow, the cooking method of this dish is great, I'll try it later and I hope it tastes the way it look. Thanks for sharing!