Hainanese chicken rice is a Singaporean staple infused with spicy and bright ginger, pungent garlic, and rich chicken flavors. This minimal chicken rice dish includes tender, poached chicken, fragrant Jasmine rice with rendered chicken fat, and a flavorful broth.
In theory, Hainan chicken rice seems like a simple dish, but there are some tips and tricks for properly poaching the chicken for the best texture and seasoning. And making the crunchy chicken cracklins and three tasty dipping sauces complete the texture and flavor of this comforting meal.
Background
Hainanese chicken rice originated from a dish called Wenchang chicken from Chinese immigrants (from the Hainan province) moving through Southeast Asia. These days, Hainan chicken is predominantly associated with Singapore and Malaysia (nasi ayam); however, there are lots of varieties in Thailand (khao man kai), Vietnam (Cơm gà Hải Nam), and Cambodia (bai mon).
Wenchang chicken was served as a delicacy for higher-ranking officials, but once it traveled to Singapore, it transformed into a frugal immigrant dish where you used all parts of the chicken in every step to prevent waste.
For this recipe, we’re sticking to a more traditional version of Singaporean Hainanese chicken rice. This version highlights the simple and lightly poached chicken, flavorful rice, sipping broth, and a variety of dipping sauces.
Type of chicken to use
Traditionally, Hainanese chicken rice uses Wencheng chicken, a breed that originated in China and is known for its small size and tender meat. Since we don’t really have this option in America, we are shopping based on health and sustainability practices, and we use pasture-raised, organic whole chickens from farms like Buy Ranch Direct and O’Connells. For a four-person serving, we poach one 4-lb chicken in an 8-quart stock pot.
Preparing the chicken & poaching liquid
Prep the chicken by scrubbing it with salt to clean and smooth the skin. Remove and reserve any excess fat and skin from the neck and the tailbone. We will render this fat and use it to flavor the rice later–an essential part of this dish.
The poaching liquid is used to slowly season the chicken. It’s meant to be a light broth and doesn’t need many ingredients. The main takeaway is to go low and slow while poaching the chicken. The trick is to keep the poaching liquid at 170°F to ensure a slow coast to the finish line without overcooking the meat.
Here’s what we season our poaching liquid with:
- Kosher salt seasons and tenderizes the chicken. Add enough salt to the water so that it tastes like it’s seasoned, but not too much like it tastes like sea salt. We want the poaching water to season the chicken, but we also don’t want the final broth to be too salty. The flavor will get saltier as we poach the chicken. We add about five tablespoons of kosher salt to 18 cups of water.
- Aromatics like ginger, scallions, black peppercorns, and garlic add warmth and an earthy spice to the broth. Other ingredients we’ve added in the past are galangal.
- Fresh cilantro with the stems offers a light and refreshing herby taste that isn’t too overpowering. You can also add pandan leaves for some herby sweetness.
Frying up chicken cracklins
Hainan chicken is the ultimate example of no-waste because it uses all parts of poultry. Before poaching the chicken, remove the excess fat and skin from the tail and neck areas to render it a rich and fatty oil for the rice. To render the fat and skin, place them into a small pot and add just enough water to cover all parts of the fat and skin. Then, just boil down the water until the fat starts to cook out of the pieces.
When you render fatty chicken skin, you get a wonderful by-product: chicken cracklins! Scoop out the cracklins, and then add some minced garlic and ginger to infuse the oil for extra flavor. Chicken cracklins aren’t always a garnish for Hainanese chicken, but they’re a requirement in our house because they add an amazing crunchy texture to the rice and tender meat.
Ingredients in the rice
One of the most important–and my favorite–parts of Hainanese chicken is the rice. Hainan chicken rice is easily cooked in a rice cooker with:
- White Jasmine rice has a light aromatic taste and is a perfect base for this dish because you can build on the flavor with the broth and aromatics. Try to stick with long-grain varieties for rice because we want a less sticky consistency as opposed to more glutinous alternatives like short-grain or medium-grain rice.
- Savory poaching broth from the chicken adds the right amount of seasoning to the rice instead of typical water.
- Rich rendered chicken fat with crispy, aromatic garlic and ginger pieces adds even more flavor to the rice and creates the glassy, al-dente texture.
Hainanese chicken dipping sauces
Hainan chicken often comes with dipping sauces to eat with the simple dish. Think of it like a make-your-own-adventure eating experience. We’ve seen many varieties of sauces, but here are our favorite three:
- Sweet soy sauce is a potent but simple dark soy sauce and rock sugar dip. The rock sugar helps create a subtle sweetness in the savory sauce.
- Ginger scallion sauce is full of aromatic spice with ginger, garlic, and scallions sauteed lightly. We love pouring this over the chicken and rice to get a warm and spicy sauce in every bite.
- Chili sauce is for those who love some heat with their chicken. This can be a personal preference for some people, and traditional recipes call for fresh chilies, vinegar, sugar, ginger, and garlic. We typically like to cheat by starting with a base of Sambal and adding other ingredients as needed.
How to serve Hainanese chicken rice
Once you’ve poached and broken down the chicken, made the rice, and the sauces, you can assemble your meal. On a plate, add sliced chicken on a bed of fragrant rice and chicken cracklins. A garnish with Hainan chicken is sliced cucumbers and a cup of poaching broth to sip on while eating. Place the three Hainan chicken sauces in ramekins for easy scooping. If you’ve got additional cilantro, you can also sprinkle it on the top as a garnish.
Eating Hainan chicken rice is based on your preference, but I prefer mixing all the sauces over the rice and chicken to get lots of flavor in every bite.
Tips for cooking juicy, flavorful chicken
Here are some tips we’ve found along the way to cooking Hainan chicken at home:
- Prep all your ingredients ahead of time and follow a timeline to make cooking easier. Here’s a quick timeline: prep and measure out all the ingredients, poach chicken, render fat while poaching chicken, make the rice (using rendered fat from the previous step), make sauces as the rice cooks, and serve.
- Use a hook to move the chicken in and out of the poaching stock to prevent tearing the chicken. I tried using tongs to lift the feet, but it got tiring every time I wanted to check the temperature, and I tore the skin off the leg.
- Keep your poaching stock no higher than 170 °F. This temperature keeps the low and slow method of poaching the chicken to keep the meat tender and soft, while also allowing the seasoning to seep thoroughly as it cooks.
- Remove the chicken once it reaches an internal temperature of 155 °F in the breast meat closest to the bone (this takes the longest to cook). Transfer the chicken to an iced bath for about 10 minutes, or until the breast cools to 135 °F.
Hainanese Chicken Rice
Ingredients
Chicken
- 4-5 lb whole chicken
- 2 tbsp kosher salt Diamond Crystal brand preferred
Poaching stock
- 18 c water enough that the chicken is floating
- 5 tbsp kosher salt enough so that it’s salty / Diamond Crystal brand preferred
- 1 tbsp whole black peppercorns
- ½ c sliced ginger with skin
- ¼ c smashed garlic cloves
- 4 scallion roots only the white parts
- 1 bunch cilantro with stems
Finished chicken
- water
- ice
- 1 tbsp roasted sesame oil
Chicken rendered
- ¼ c chopped chicken fat and skin collected from neck and tailbone
- water enough to cover the fat and skin
- ½ tbsp minced ginger
- ½ tbsp minced garlic
- neutral oil if necessary
Rice
- 2 tbsp rendered chicken fat from above with fried ginger and garlic
- 2 c white Jasmine rice
- 2 c chicken stock from poaching liquid
- ¼ tsp kosher salt to taste / Diamond Crystal brand preferred
- pandan leaf optional
Ginger scallion sauce
- 1 inch ginger peeled and sliced
- 5 cloves garlic
- 4 scallions minced whites separated from greens
- 6 tbsp neutral oil
- ½ tsp kosher salt to taste
- ⅛ tsp white pepper to taste
Sweet soy sauce
- 2 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 2 tbsp crushed rock sugar
- 2 tbsp water
Chili sauce
- ¼ c Sambal Olek or your preferred chili sauce
- 1 tbsp rice vinegar
- ½ tsp kosher salt Diamond Crystal brand preferred
- ¼ tsp cane sugar
- ½ inch ginger peeled and sliced
- 2 cloves garlic
- chilis optional
Optional garnishes
- chicken cracklins from above
- sliced cucumbers
- cilantro
- sliced scallions from leftover green parts above
Equipment Used
- measuring cups and spoons
- knife and cutting board
- stockpot with lid
- tongs
- spatula
- large bowl, big enough to fit chicken
- saute pan
- Strainer
- ladle
- towel
Instructions
Prepping chicken
- Remove the tail and excess fat from the 4-5 lb whole chicken and set aside.
- Dry chicken with paper towels.
- Rub 2 tbsp kosher salt all over the chicken to clean. Set aside while you do the stock.
Poaching stock
- In the stock pot, add all the poaching ingredients: 4-5 lb whole chicken, 18 c water, 5 tbsp kosher salt, 1 tbsp whole black peppercorns, ½ c sliced ginger, ¼ c smashed garlic cloves, 4 scallion roots, and 1 bunch cilantro with stems.
- Bring to a simmer at a temperature of 170°F.
- Hook the chicken and slowly lower it in the water. Make sure the poaching liquid also goes inside the carcass. Face the chicken so that the chicken breast faces upwards to prevent overcooking.
- Poach the chicken until the breast measures at 155°F with a thermometer.
- Things to remember: keep the poaching liquid at a maximum of 170°F and lift the chicken gently with the poultry hook (or tongs on the legs) to prevent breaking the skin.
Finishing chicken and broth
- Remove the chicken from the poaching liquid once the chicken breast measures 155°F and place it in a water and ice bath until the chicken feels cool to the touch, or measures at 135°F.
- Remove from water and let dry for a few minutes on a cutting board.
- With your hands, coat the chicken generously with 1 tbsp roasted sesame oil. This will prevent oxidation and browning.
- Remove all the original poaching ingredients from the liquid by using a strainer. Reserve stock for rice and soup. Set aside.
Carve the chicken into 8 pieces
- Face the chicken breast side up with the drumsticks facing towards you.
- Cut the skin and meat in between the drumstick/thigh and the chest. When you reach the bone, use your hands to gently bend the drumstick/thigh backward so that the hip joint is exposed. Use the knife to cut through the joint and release the drumstick/thigh from the body. Repeat on the other drumstick.
- Separate the thigh from the leg by cutting through the joint.
- Locate the center of the breast where it indents and position your knife so it’s slightly off-center on the left or right. Slice the meat until you reach the bone gently use the breast bone rib as a guide and continue to cut the breast meat. Repeat on the other side of the breast.
- To remove the whole wings, slice through the joint that attaches the wing to the body. Repeat on the other side.
- Place the sliced chicken pieces on a plate and cover with foil or a towel to prevent them from drying out.
Rendering chicken fat + frying ginger & garlic
- Put ¼ c chopped chicken fat and skin in a small pan. Add enough water so it barely covers the fat and skin.
- Cook over medium heat as the water begins to boil off and the fat starts to render oil and fry the chicken skin.
- Here's how it will look in the pot when it's finished.
- Once the skin is golden brown and crispy, transfer it to bowl and set aside.
- In the remaining oil, add the ½ tbsp minced ginger and ½ tbsp minced garlic to fry on medium heat.
- Fry until lightly brown then remove from the heat. You should have at least 2 tablespoons of rendered chicken fat, but if you don’t, just add more neutral oil until it's about 2 tablespoons then mix.
Cooking rice
- Add the 2 tbsp rendered chicken fat with ginger and garlic to the rice pot with 2 c white Jasmine rice and ¼ tsp kosher salt. Mix thoroughly.
- Add 2 c chicken stock from the reserved chicken broth and mix again. Option: you can add a pandan leaf on top.
- Cook rice on the Jasmine or white rice setting on your rice cooker. Here's what it will look like when finished.
- Once finished, use a spatula to fluff the rice before serving.
Ginger scallion sauce
- Add 1 inch ginger, 4 scallions, and 5 cloves garlic to a food processor.
- Transfer to a saute pan over medium heat. Saute with 6 tbsp neutral oil until aromatic, about 30 seconds.
- Add green scallions and continue sauteing briefly.
- Turn off the heat and add ½ tsp kosher salt and ⅛ tsp white pepper to taste.
Sweet soy sauce
- In a small saute pan over medium heat, combine all the ingredients: 2 tbsp dark soy sauce, 2 tbsp crushed rock sugar, and 2 tbsp water.
- Stir until the rock sugar is completely melted.
- Cook for 3-4 minutes or until the consistency is similar to light maple syrup (see photo). Remove from heat and set aside. It should thicken as it cools.
Chili sauce
- In a food processor, add all the ingredients: ¼ c Sambal Olek, 1 tbsp rice vinegar, ½ tsp kosher salt, ¼ tsp cane sugar, ½ inch ginger, 2 cloves garlic, and chilis.
- Process until blended completely. Taste test and adjust any ingredients based on your preference.
Serving a plate of Hainan chicken
- Ladle the chicken broth onto a bowl and add scallions on top.
- On a plate, add the rice and place sliced chicken on top. Sprinkle chicken cracklins from above, sliced scallions (green part leftover), and cilantro on top of the rice and chicken. Add sliced cucumbers on the side.
- Serve chicken rice with the ginger sauce, chili sauce, and sweet soy sauce.
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