Hainanese Chicken in the Steam Oven

After seeing this on SBS I desperately wanted to cook it and eat it! We had eaten it years ago but had forgotten exactly what it was like.  So went to the local Singaporean restaurant just to try it again and it lived up to all our expectations.  That combination of the steamed, succulent chicken breast with the chicken rice, chilli sauce, garlic and ginger sauce and sweet soy took us back to that little Singaporean hole-in-the-wall where we enjoyed it the first time.

I wanted to cook it but I didn’t want to use a whole pot full of chicken stock.  Even though you could use the stock again in something else it’s just too much messing around, too many pots and too much washing up.  It is also too fussy with having to put the chicken into the stock, then bringing back to the boil and having to be on call in the kitchen.  So I have converted Tiffany’s recipe to use in the Steam Oven.  It was so much easier!

Take all your ingredients from the SBS Recipe  and make the Chilli Sauce (I used only 4 large chillies which were plenty)

Now make the Ginger and Garlic sauce, the mixture for inside the chicken and the soy, salt and sesame oil for rubbing once its cooked.

I also adjusted the Chicken Rice quantity down to 1½ cups Long Grain Rice, with 2 cups of Chicken Stock and the same quantity of ginger, garlic and pandan leaves.  Remember if you are altering the quantity the general guide is ‘quantity of rice to liquid plus 1/2 cup’.

The chicken I used was 1.2kg Lilydale which I removed from the fridge for about 1/2 hour before I started so it would come to room temperature.

Stuff the ginger, garlic and shallot mixture in the cavity of the chicken.  Now add the Chinese Wine and 1/2 the soy.

Place breast side down into the solid tray with 1 cup chicken stock, about 4 slices of ginger and 1 large shallot (or spring onion) cut roughly.

Place into the Steam Oven @ 95° for 40 minutes.

Remove, drain from stock and place onto a plate.  Rub with the mixture of Soy, Seseme Oil and Salt that is in the recipe and leave to rest uncovered.  This chicken is served more at room temperature rather than piping hot.

Now put your Chicken Rice into the Steamer as described in the recipe with the cooked ginger and garlic mix and the pandan leaves @ 100° for 17 minutes.  Remove the pandan leaves and fluff up.  Don’t add anymore salt to the rice, the salt level was adequate from the stock.

Serve with all the sauces and your Chicken Rice.

Absolutely fantastic – the chicken and the rice were perfectly cooked!  You can see how tender the chicken is in this photo.  You will never boil a huge pot of stock again….

This is an adapted recipe from SBS Food, Created by Tiffany Wong

This dish is traditionally served with just the chicken breast so the remainder of the chicken will be turned into something else.  Only Serves 2 like this so if you wanted to cook another chicken at the same time then double your mixture for the cavity to Serve 4.  You can bone and slice the other parts of the chicken if you wish.  They will still be tender and juicy.  Actually some restaurants will serve you the thigh fillet, I guess it depends on how many they have pre-cooked ready to serve.