Hainanese Chicken Rice

It is not too difficult to cook a delicious Chicken Rice. As long as you follow all the secret steps, you can easily make your own delicious Chicken Rice.The most important is to have fresh ingredient especially the chicken and the herbs. The fragrance of the herbs will eventually bring the rice to the next level where we can really eat the rice by itself without any dish. 

It is necessary to have at least a chicken in order to get a good flavor of chicken rice. It is preferred to get a pot that has a size as close as the chicken so that you can immerse the whole chicken into the water without having too much water. The objective of this is to have a concentrate chicken stock so that you can use the stock to cook the rice. Besides water, we need to cook the soup with ginger, lemon grass and pandan leaves. Immerse the chicken with these herbs for at least 45 minutes or fully cooked. After that, lift the cooked chicken out of the boiling water and quickly immerse into the cold water (tap water). This will stop the cooking process of the chicken besides allowing the chicken's meat to absorb some cold water so that the meat will remain juicy and tender. After 5 minutes, remove the chicken from the cold water and cover the chicken with sesame oil. This will prevent the skin/meat from dehydration.

In the mean time, rinse and drain the rice. Use the chicken stock to cook the rice by following the manual instruction of the rice cooker. Add in some fresh pandan leaves into the rice. This will make the rice very fragrant.

Ingredients:

Soup

1 chicken (around 1-1.5 kg)

3 stalks of lemon grass

5 cm of ginger

5 pandan leaves

3 cups of rice

salt to taste

sesame oil

Chili Sauce

6 chilies

2 cm of ginger

1 clove of garlic

100ml vinegar

salt and sugar to taste

Ginger sauce

4 cm of ginger

50 ml olive oil

salt and sugar to taste

1. Heat up a pot of water. Make sure that the water level is high enough to cover the whole chicken.

2. When tiny bubbles start to form, add in the lemon grass, ginger and pandan leaves into the water.

3. In the mean time, clean the chicken by rubbing salt throughout the whole chicken. After rinsing with water, immerse the chicken in the hot water.

4. Let the water to heat up slowly and once it is boiling, lower down the heat and close the lid. On and off, turn the chicken. Depending on the size of the chicken, it will normally take around 45-60 minutes to cook the chicken. You may test the chicken readiness by checking at the thigh area.

5. Once the chicken is ready, lift up the chicken from the pot and immediately transfer and immerse the chicken in cold water. This is an important step as the cold water does not only stop the cooking process, it will allow the chicken's meat to absorb some water. This will make the flesh juicy and tender. Let the chicken soak inside the cold water for around 5-10 minutes. After that, lift up the chicken and hand it dry for a minute before use some sesame oil to rub all over the chicken's skin. This is to retain a layer of moisture on the skin.
                                   

6. While waiting for the chicken, rinse and drain the rice. Use the chicken stock to cook the rice. In order to get oily rice, use as much the oil portion from the soup. If the oil is not sufficient, you may add in a teaspoon of butter in the rice. Add in the pandan leaves, ginger and lemon grass (from the soup) as well. Cook the rice according to the rice cooker manual. 

                          

7. As for the chili sauce, put all the ingredient in a blender. Blend until fine and season with salt and sugar.

8. As the ginger sauce, put all the ingredient in a blender. Blend until fine and season with salt and sugar.