Glazed chicken rice inspired by Hainanese dish
Discover how to make glazed chicken rice inspired by the classic Hainanese dish. This recipe takes you through the steps to create tender, flavorful chicken with a delicious glaze, served over fragrant rice. Perfect for a comforting and satisfying meal that brings a taste of Hainanese cuisine to your kitchen. Enjoy the blend of savory and sweet flavors in this easy-to-follow recipe.
Transcript
00:00Here's a dish inspired by chicken rice, the national dish of Singapore with Chinese roots.
00:06Chicken rice is poached chicken served with rice that you cook in the resulting poaching
00:10liquid. I like the concept, but I'm not wild about plain poached chicken. I don't like
00:14that slimy skin. I want crispy skin, or a coating of some kind, or both, which is what
00:19I'm doing here.
00:20First step is poach a whole chicken. I don't think I'm doing anything different or weird
00:23here. 3.5 pound bird goes in a big pot, a kilo and a half. It could feed as many as
00:28six people with the rice. A little bit of ginger to flavor the broth. It's gonna get
00:32strained out later, so no need to peel. A few sticks of lemongrass. I love that stuff.
00:37You could use some lime zest instead. About twice as much salt as I'd normally use to
00:41season a bird this size. I need enough salt for the chicken and the broth.
00:44And then just cover that bird in water, and while I'm here, I'll put in a probe thermometer
00:49to the deepest part of the breast. I'll lid that up and turn the heat on high at first
00:53just to get things going, but I don't want to see it bubbling any more than that, which
00:57is to say, hardly bubbling at all. So when it looks like that, I'm gonna lower my heat
01:01to where I can maintain that.
01:03Poaching is just like sous-vide. The water doesn't need to be any hotter than the final
01:06internal temperature you desire on the meat. You just let the chicken slowly come to equilibrium
01:11with the water, and it will be cooked at perfect uniform doneness throughout.
01:15As you can hear, I've been sick, so that smell is very comforting.
01:19While we wait, sliced cucumbers. I've been loving the mini ones lately, but you could
01:22just use one big one. Chicken rice is usually served with an array of garnishes, one being
01:26some raw or maybe blanched cucumber, plain cucumber. Since this is just home cooking,
01:31I don't want to have to make a whole bunch of garnishes. I just want to make one garnish.
01:34So I'm gonna have the cucumbers, but I'm gonna put them with some kind of onion, a shallot
01:37in this case. I thought I had a fresh chili to dice up and put in here, but I couldn't
01:41find it in the fridge.
01:43And then I'm gonna do just a quick pickle on those. A whole bottle of rice vinegar in
01:46there. It's not a waste. I'm gonna reuse that later for my sauce. And a big handful of sugar.
01:50It doesn't matter if it doesn't dissolve at first, it will in the fridge. Since I sliced
01:54that stuff thin, it'll taste pickled by the time the chicken is cooked, which should take
01:58an hour at most.
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02:43So, this chicken, believe it or not, is done. Yes, that's just 150 F in the breast, 65 C,
02:48but pasteurization is a function of temperature and time. 165 F is the temp at which all the
02:54germs die instantly. If you hold them at a lower temperature for a while, it does the
02:58same thing. There's meat pasteurization charts you can find online. I held this at 150 for
03:03at least 10 minutes, which is very easy to do with poaching, because the liquid outside
03:08is basically the same temp as the meat inside. That's why slow pasteurization works so well
03:13with a poaching or sous vide. It's way harder to hold a constant temperature when you're
03:17roasting at 400 or something.
03:19For traditional chicken rice, I think you generally plunge this into ice water. That
03:23gets you a firm, jelly-like texture on the skin. I am among the many Westerners who has
03:28trouble with that very popular texture in Eastern food, so I'm not doing it. I'll just
03:33let that cool while I bring my broth to a full boil. I want to reduce that, concentrate
03:37that flavor as much as I can before I cook my rice in it.
03:41When the chicken is cool enough to handle, I'll break it down into portions. I usually
03:45start by cutting the skin between the legs and the body, and then I just reach in and
03:49dislocate the hip joints. Now I can just put my knife in where that joint used to connect,
03:54cut down, and there's the leg and thigh quarter. Don't be freaked out by the pink — it's
03:58been pasteurized. It's safe. Plus, I'm gonna cook this a second time in the oven, so I
04:01wouldn't want it to be fully done at this stage anyway.
04:04Really easy to separate the leg and the thigh, and for the wings, I like to dislocate that
04:08joint again, mainly just so I can see where I should cut. I want bone-in breast pieces
04:13today, so I'm gonna shave off the backbone. I'm cutting through the rib bones there, which
04:18is easy to do when it's cooked. Hey, you know what we should do with that backbone? We can
04:21get a lot of flavor out of that before that broth is done reducing.
04:24Now I'm gonna split the breast down the middle, through the breastbone. Might take a little
04:27force. And then I usually like to cut each side of the breast in half as well, right
04:31through the bones. That just gets you a portion size closer to the legs and the thighs. I
04:35swear this chicken will look appetizing before we're done here. Keep faith.
04:39I'm planning to make two cups of dry, long-grain rice, so I'll need about three cups of liquid
04:43to cook it in. Ideally, I want to reduce this to three cups, though you could always
04:47add water if you reduce it too far. Strain that out, and hey, nailed it. Legit, I actually
04:52nailed that.
04:53Now, you could finish this dinner right now, or you could throw all this in the fridge
04:57and do the rest another time. Half an hour before you want to eat, start the rice. That's
05:01just two cups, about 400 grams at most of long grain. And I'm washing it because I'm
05:05going for the traditional East Asian fluffy rice vibe. Just rinse and pour a few times
05:11to remove the powdery, free starch coat.
05:13I'll peel and finely chop some garlic and ginger. Pretty common to put aromatics in
05:17the rice for chicken rice. And if I had a lot of rendered fat from my chicken, I would
05:21cook these in the chicken fat, but I just didn't get much, so I'm gonna use toasted
05:25sesame oil instead. Once those are just starting to go golden, I'll pour in my rice and toast
05:30it there dry for a minute. Same way the Italians do for risotto. This is totally a thing with
05:35chicken rice too, often done in the chicken's own rendered fat.
05:38In goes my broth. It's chunky because it's chilled. Totally fine that any fat goes in
05:42there as well. I'll stir that up, cover and bring to a boil, then reduce my heat all the
05:47way down to low. Just let it steam covered the rest of the way.
05:50Here's my pickles, and I'm gonna boil that sweet pickle juice down to a glaze. Try to
05:54be more careful than me, and don't let any onions go overboard. They can burn at the
05:58temperature at which we'll be boiling the glaze. In goes a lot of soy sauce, maybe one
06:03part soy sauce to two parts pickle juice. Then I'm gonna just bring this to a boil and
06:07reduce.
06:08Devotees might notice this recipe is similar to the reverse braised beef recipe that I
06:12posted recently. Indeed, when I was cooking that, it occurred to me that the same techniques
06:16might be applied to chicken rice, which is a dish that I've wanted to find my own way
06:19of doing for a while, so here we are.
06:21When bubbles start to stack on themselves like that, that's a good indication that you've
06:25reduced any sweet liquid into a syrup. It won't seem very syrupy yet, but that's because
06:29it's hot. It'll thicken a ton as it cools. And if you want it even more syrupy, or if
06:33you just want to have more glaze, you could always summon forth the upside-down bear
06:37and stir in a little honey. Can't hurt. Maybe more vinegar to balance it. Just taste and
06:41adjust.
06:42OK, chicken onto a sheet pan. It won't look bloody much longer. I'll give that a good
06:45splash of oil. Make sure the pan and all the pieces are coated, and the pieces are positioned
06:50skin side up. I want to crisp those skins under my broiler. It should just take a few
06:55minutes. And by the time the skins are crispy to the touch, the meat inside should be perfectly
07:00reheated.
07:01And then I'm going to toss those pieces straight into my glaze. This is why I didn't season
07:05those pieces before they went under the grill. That glaze is salty with the soy sauce.
07:09Here's that fragrant chickeny rice. Pile that on. It's really the main event.
07:13A couple of contrasting chicken pieces, and then a big handful of the drained pickles.
07:17Any excess glaze you have, you can spoon over the top. I was not ready for how perfectly
07:22cooked that chicken turned out. Super juicy inside, without having any of that gelatinous
07:27texture that pink chicken can have. And browned skin on top. Poached, then broiled. It's really
07:32the best of all worlds. Basically sous-vide, but all you need is a pot.
07:36Yeah, what am I thinking trying to eat a chicken leg with a fork? Let's just do this thing.