Hainanese Chicken Rice

One of Singapore's favorite dishes

I've never tried Singaporean food before till now. I'm a fan of Marc Wein's vlogs. One of the places that he has visited that really just stood out for me was Singapore. The food there looks amazing, it's as if each dish is created in a sort of magical way with secret ingredients that make the dish come to life. I decided to try a simple but yet staple dish from Singapore, Hainanese chicken rice. This recipe was also featured in my favorite gourmand show, and I just had to try it. For a first time, I think I did pretty well, although there is always room for improvement.

Recipe
1 whole chicken
1 garlic bulb, half of the bulb will be for the broth, the other half will be for the rice
1 tbsp of ginger - crushed into a paste, for the rice
1 tbsp of ginger- sliced for the broth
2 cups of rice
10 cups of water
1 tsp of salt

Side Salad:
1/2 cucumber sliced diagonally
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
4 lettuce leaves
8 Springs of cilantro

Chili garlic ginger sauce:
1 garlic clove
1/2 in. of ginger
1 teaspoon of red chili peppers
1/2 lime juice
1 tbsp of sesame oil
1 tbsp of vinegar
1 tsp of sugar
1 tsp of salt
1/4 cup of chicken broth

Sweet Soy sauce:
1 cup of chicken broth
1/8 cup of soy sauce
1/8 cup of sugar

Directions:

1. Remove the skin from the chicken and set that aside, you will need that later on to add flavor to your rice.
2. Start with putting your 10 cups of water, to boil in a deep pot, once the water starts to rapidly boil put your chicken inside, turn off the heat, and let the chicken cook with the residual heat from the water for 30 minutes.
3. Add 1 tbsp of ginger, and half a bulb of garlic chopped in with the chicken, to add flavor to the broth as it cooks for those 30 minutes.
4. Once the 30 minutes have passed, turn on your burner to medium/high heat and cook your chicken in the broth for an additional 45 minutes with the garlic and ginger.
5. Using a wide pan, add some cooking oil, and at medium/low temperature add you're chicken skin, cook that for about 2 -3 minutes as the chicken skin begins to release the fat and juice, add your 1 tbsp of ginger (make sure to turn it into a paste by crushing/grinding it) and add your crushed garlic (half a bulb) into the pan with the cooking oil and chicken fat/skin and stir, cooking it till you start to smell the fragrance of the aromatics of the ginger and garlic.
6. Add your 2 cups of rice to the pan with the ginger and garlic, mix it around well and then transfer it over to a rice cooker if you are using one, add your 3 cups of chicken broth and 1 tsp of salt, cook your rice as you normally would for white rice.
7. Now it's time to make the sauce, the first one you are going to mix in all of the ingredients for the garlic ginger chili sauce in a bowl and set aside, it's done.
8. To make the second sauce, sweet soy sauce, you are going to mix in all of your ingredient in a pan, turn the stove on to medium/high heat and let that reduce, takes around 5 minutes, once the sauce has reduce to almost half it's original proportion and begins to look thicker, it is done, set that aside for later.
9. Let's make our salad; for the cherry tomatoes, slice it in half, the lettuce cut into thirds, for the cucumber peel it and then slice it diagonally, arrange the salad how ever you would like to decorate your plate, have fun with it. For the cilantro, just cut off the stem, as it will be used as a garnish.
10. Once the rice is done, remove the chicken skin, and use a small bowl as a mold for the rice, you will put the rice inside the small bowl and flip it upside down on the serving plate to create a nice uniform rice shape.
11. Remove the chicken from the broth, cut off the breast from the bone, and slice it evenly about 1/2 inch per slice, you can put your chicken slices on top of your rice, or to the side, add your salad, have your two dipping sauces ready, garnish your chicken and salad with cilantro and it's done!

Note: You can add a ladle of the chicken broth on top of your rice and chicken, or serve the chicken broth in a small side bowl to eat with your chicken rice. You can also drizzle the sweet soy sauce on top of your chicken as well.

I hope you enjoyed this recipe, I had fun doing it, and learn this dish. I know it's not authentic, made a little changes to the recipe like instead of using sugar I like to use maple syrup, and the reason behind that is I find it's a better healthier alternative to sugar, our body is able to break it down a lot easier than processed cane sugar, and I feel like it doesn't give the dish a weird taste or makes it any less sweet as well, I highly recommend playing with maple syrup in your cooking it's not only for pancakes, it's a better alternative to honey when it comes to using for cooking as the chemical composition is not destroyed by heat compared to honey.