Zoom-in Singapore food – Hainanese Chicken Rice

If you are trying to take away a Hainanese Chicken Rice in Hainan, which you may think it makes the most sense, you may be disappointed by their own type of Chicken rice, which is literally plain Chicken breast on top of white rice; this should never be what you expect. The real authentic Hainanese Chicken Rice is actually derived from Singapore in the 20’s to 30’ from a Hainanese chef. This Singapore staple is a lot more complex in preparing than normal “chicken and rice” and of course, a lot more scrumptious. The rice have a tangy chicken umami Let us unveil you the secret way to prepare a proper salivating Hainanese Chicken Rice,

To make a proper Hainanese Chicken Rice, you need to stuff the chicken with fried garlic, gingers, rolled up spring onions and what the Malaysian called Malan, a Malaysian geranial in advance.  Then you need to smear the chicken with salt and put it into stock, leave it boils for five minutes and take it out immediately. You need to repeat this process several times depending on the chicken size. While the chicken is stilling boiling in the stock, you can fry the cooked rice with some garlic to enrich the taste. After the chicken is ready and air-dried, pop the garlic-fried rice in the chicken stock that used boiled the chicken previously, this process is not only for glazing the rice with chicken oil but also reinforcing the taste of the rice.

To qualify a Hainanese Chicken Rice the chicken has to be in the right colour, namely, slightly peach around the bone and bloody red in the marrow; it perfects with a gooey layer in between skin and meat. With the sleek and tender chicken burst with umami juice, who cares about cholesterol?

By Jennifer Chan