🇲🇾 How to Make Hainanese Chicken Rice

Craving Hainanese Chicken Rice? On FoodNeverComes the food never actually comes — so here's how to make real Hainanese Chicken Rice at home, in about 1 hr 15 min, with stuff you probably already have.

🛒 Ingredients

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• 1 whole chicken, about 1.5kg
• a thumb of ginger, sliced, 4 spring onions, 1 pandan leaf
• 2 tbsp salt
• 300g jasmine rice
• 2 tbsp rendered chicken fat, 3 cloves garlic, 1 tsp grated ginger
• Chilli sauce: 6 red chillies, 3 cloves garlic, a thumb of ginger, lime juice, sugar, a splash of the stock
• dark soy and cucumber to serve

👩‍🍳 Method

1. Rub the chicken with salt, rinse, then lower it into a pot of water with the ginger, spring onion and pandan.
2. Bring it to the barest tremble and hold it there 35–40 min. A rolling boil tears the skin and toughens the meat — the water should shiver, never bubble.
3. Straight into an ice bath for 10 min. This is what sets the skin into that cool jelly layer, and it is the difference between homemade and hawker.
4. Fry the garlic and ginger in the chicken fat, add the drained rice and fry until the grains turn glossy, then cook it in the poaching stock instead of water.
5. Blend the chilli sauce ingredients with a spoonful of the hot stock so it emulsifies rather than sitting in a puddle.
6. Chop the chicken, serve on the rice with cucumber, chilli sauce and dark soy, and a small bowl of the poaching broth on the side. The broth is not optional.