[x_section style=”margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0 0px 0 0px; “][x_row inner_container=”true” marginless_columns=”true” bg_color=”” class=”pan man ” style=”margin: 45 auto 0px auto; padding: 45 0px 0px 0px; “][x_column bg_color=”” type=”1/1″ style=”padding: 0 0 45 0; “][x_custom_headline level=”h2″ looks_like=”h3″ accent=”false” class=”pan man”]The world’s humblest chicken ‘n rice
[/x_custom_headline][/x_column][/x_row][/x_section][x_section style=”margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0 0px 0 0px; “][x_row inner_container=”true” marginless_columns=”true” bg_color=”” style=”margin: 0px auto 0px auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; “][x_column bg_color=”” type=”1/1″ style=”padding: 0 0 0 0; “][x_text]How complicated can boiled chicken with rice be?
By C Y Gopinath [/x_text][/x_column][/x_row][/x_section][x_section style=”margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px; padding: 0 0px 45px 0px; “][x_row inner_container=”true” marginless_columns=”true” bg_color=”” style=”margin: 0px auto 0px auto; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; “][x_column bg_color=”” type=”1/1″ class=”pan man” style=”padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; “][x_text]

 

I mean, really. Can you call boiled chicken and rice a dish?   Take a chicken, cut it into bite-sized pieces or joint it, plop it into water, boil till cooked. Right? That’s how grandma always cooked chicken, and then she’d use the stock to do cook the rice, so that must be all right. Right?

Let’s go with the flow for a moment. Let’s say I took those chicken pieces, boiled as just described, sliced them up, and served them to you with plain rice and a chilly sauce. How many stars would you rate it as you ate it?

Wait, don’t tell me. You wouldn’t rate it any stars, because you wouldn’t even eat it. Who wants boiled chicken with rice? Even if grandma made it.

This is just about exactly when I should begin telling you about the boiled chicken and rice which is all I have for lunch at least twice a week. Across the road from my workplace in Bangkok is a roadside eaterie named after the only dish on its menu — Hainan Chicken with Rice, known here by its Thai name of Khao Mun Kai.

Sit at one of the steel tables there and for a mere 40 baht (1.3$ or 80 Indian rupees, whichever you have in your wallet) you will be served an unpretentious combination of boiled chicken slices neatly arrayed like a hand of cards, with jasmine rice and a sauce of garlic, red chillies and soya sauce. And exactly three slices of cucumber.

In a glass case to a side of the shop hang three whole boiled chickens, creamy white, off which he carves out portions of meat for slicing. The slices look moist, even wet. In the mouth, they feel silky, melting like chicken seldom does, and releasing flavors that simple boiled chicken should not have. Cinnamon? Star anise? Celery? Ginger?

Taken together with the warm, unpolished jasmine rice and a touch of the dark brown chilly-garlic-tamarind sauce, suddenly bland dresses up in spicy, and unexceptional comes dancing with amazing, making you realize like some Confucius that the whole is once again greater than the sum of its parts.

Look at it this way — there must be a reason why this deceptively simple dish was ranked number 45 in CNNGo’s list of the world’s 50 most delicious dishes. It has taken me many months of meditation, reflection, study and practice to understand and master Hainanese Chicken with Rice, including why there’s not much Hainanese about it these. Along the way, I have had to learn a new and unexpected way to boil a whole chicken, and also an unusual way to feed chicken, should I one day decide to get into hatcheries.

In the city of Wenchang in China’s Hainan province, they breed a small, fleshy species of free-range chicken, which they fatten and make succulent through a diet of coconut and peanut bran in the last two months before going to market. The cooked version of this chicken, known as Wengchang Chicken for some reason, is most commonly just boiled, cut into pieces, and served, typically with a mixture of spices including ginger and salt.

The skin of Wenchang chicken is typically yellow, with an oily appearance, although the meat is somewhat drier and has more texture than battery chickens. This unassuming dish is probably the ancestor of the dish loved across Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand as Hainanese Chicken and Rice.

Wengchang Chicken was co-opted into the cuisine of the migrant Chinese living south of China in the region they referred to as Nanyang, which covered Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Viet Nam. The Hainanese preferred older, plumper birds that yielded more fat and an oilier, more flavorful dish.

The chicken is boiled in a stock of pork and chicken bones, the broth being re-used over and over again, being topped up with water only as needed. This iterative process results in a master stock that gets richer and more complex the more birds are boiled in it, and at the same time, results in poached meats that teem with subtle flavors.

In theory, a master stock can be sustained indefinitely if due care is taken to ensure it does not spoil. There are claims of master stocks in China that are hundreds of years old, passed down through generations of cooks in this way. Sounds fun, but in my personal opinion, you should not try to create a master stock or pass down a broth to your grandchildren to poach birds in.

Instead you could boil your chicken the way I learned how. It’s the no-boil boil, and I guarantee you’ll get a silky wet succulent chicken at the end.

How to boil chicken my Hainan way

1. Do not use frozen chicken, buy fresh young chicken. Have it cleaned and readied, but not cut into pieces.

2. Get a large stockpot of water, large enough to hold the entire chicken.

3. Add spices for flavoring. The minimum should include ginger, garlic,  scallions and soy sauce. I up the ante by including star anise and celery.

4. Bring the water to a roiling boil, then lower the heat, and lower the entire chicken into it. Bring the water back to a boil, before lowering to a simmer, covered.

5. Switch off the heat after 5 minutes, and let the broth cool to room temperature, which could take anything from three to six hours. The chicken will cook in this diminishing heat.

It will be a defining moment in your culinary life when you finally cut into the silky flesh. Use the stock that remains to cook the rice. Which rice? Well, not long-grain basmati for sure. Organic, unpolished medium-grain rices of a slightly brownish color, such as Thai Jasmine Rice (Hom Mali) are perfect.

Dipping sauce

Minced red and green chillies and garlic in soy sauce, topped with fresh minced ginger is a traditional dip. Feel free to improvise. I tried tamarind juice instead of soy sauce, as they do in Malaysia, and got a lovely spicy-tangy dip.

Hainanese Chicken and Rice is so simple that creating variations is  easy and rewarding. In Malacca, they add coconut milk to the rice, producing a sweet rice reminiscent of the Malay nasi lemak. The rice is often made into small tight balls before serving, apparently because it makes the dish portable as a worker’s lunch.

In Ipoh, bean sprouts are added to the rice; and in certain other parts, the boiled chicken is lightly fried to give it a crisp outer, though this also dries it up a little.

In Thailand, it is served with exactly three slices of fresh cucumber, a small bowl of clear bouillon from the broth with a single slice of horse radish at the bottom, and sometimes a slab of chicken blood tofu.

In Singapore, where it enjoys the status of a national dish and is also served by Singapore Airlines, it is available everywhere in stalls, with extras such as braised dark soy hard boiled egg, chicken liver, braised dark soy firm tofu with oyster sauce and a bowl of plain chicken stock soup.

But I’m a purist, and so should you be. Try Hainanese Chicken and Rice the simplest, least pretentious way first — just boiled sliced chicken with a simple rice, cucumbers, a bowl of clear soup, and a tangy dip. And then tell me if you really think anyone could improve on that.[/x_text][/x_column][/x_row][/x_section]