Hainanese chicken rice is a popular dish served in Singapore. There was a small restaurant near our apartment in Singapore which sold this. We used to go there frequently. It’s very flavorful dish with few ingredients. After moving out of Singapore we craved for this a lot. This is a favourite of my family so I tried making it at home. After about 5-6 attempts, I think, I am able to make one close to the food we used to eat. I hope you will like this. I have made this dish using whole chicken as well as chicken thighs depending upon how many were there for meal. I have used jasmine rice as well as basmati rice. I like jasmine rice better. The rice is served with red chilli sauce and flavoured soy sauce for chicken.

Ingredients

For  chicken rice (7servings)

2 ½ lb Whole Chicken

Kosher salt/Rock salt

4 inches ginger sliced into ½ inch pieces

1 bunch fresh scallion

4 cups Jasmine rice

1 inch Ginger minced fine

4 cloves of garlic minced fine

¼ cup Sesame oil

Salt to taste

Method

Rub the whole chicken with Kosher salt to remove any hair left on the chicken. Wash it with water. If you find handling a whole chicken overwhelming, you can use about 6 thigh pieces of chicken too. Take a deep and wide pot, insert few pieces of ginger sliced and scallion in the chicken, place it in the pot, add a gallon of water. The water should come above the chicken. Add 4 teaspoons of salt. Bring it to a boil and lower the heat and cook it covered for about 30 minutes. The internal temperature of the chicken should be 165 degree F. Remove the chicken on a plate. Chop the whole chicken into pieces. Sprinkle few spoons of sesame oil,  spread it on the chicken using a brush.

In another thick bottom pot add ¼ cup sesame oil, heat it up, add minced ginger and garlic. Fry it for couple of minutes till light brown and aromatic. Save 1 teaspoon of the ginger, garlic fried in a bowl. Add 3½ cups of chicken stock from the chicken that’s cooked, and 2  1/2 cups of water bring to a boil, add the jasmine rice(clean jasmine rice with water few times beforehand). If needed you can add a teaspoon of salt.  Remember there is salt already in the broth. You can use a rice cooker too if that is convenient. It takes about 10-12 minutes for the rice to be done. You can use the stock in the place of water too. I like to save some broth for soup on the side, so I used water partially.  Serve rice with chicken, red chilli sauce,  flavoured soya sauce and soup. I like to have cucumber slices or bok choy sauteed with garlic and chilli on the side.

Red Chilli Sauce

6 red thai chillis

1 teaspoon rice vinegar

½ inch ginger

3 cloves garlic

1/2 onion chopped into pieces

1 tablespoon Sriracha sauce

3 tablespoons chicken stock

Salt to taste

Grind all the ingredients to a smooth paste. Consistency should be watery. If the sauce tastes spicy add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice. If you dont have red chillis, you can use green ones too, just the color of the sauce won’t be bright red.

Flavored soy sauce

2 table spoons chicken stock

1 tablespoon Kikkoman soy sauce

3 tsp sweet soy sauce

1 tsp ginger garlic fried( this was set aside from rice)

½ teaspoon chilli powder

1 tablespoon oyster sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

Soup from chicken stock

4 mushrooms sliced thin

1 egg beaten

Pepper ¼ teaspoon

You can serve the stock as it is  or you can add few ingredients like sliced mushrooms, scallions and egg. Bring the stock to a boil add the beaten egg in a thin stream to the stock. Add mushrooms , cook for few minutes and add chopped scallions at the end.