Slow Cooker Hainanese Chicken
Speed - 97%
Simplicity - 98%
Tastiness - 100%
98%
Excellent!
This chicken is so moist, tender, and really aromatic. Authentic Hainanese dish right out of the crockpot.
Ingredients
- 1 Whole Chicken
- 1 Bunch Pandan Leaves
- 1 Thumb-sized Ginger peeled, sliced
- 1 Bulbs garlic peeled, crushed
- Salt
- Chili Sauce optional
For the Ginger Dipping Sauce
- 1/4 Cup Ginger peeled, sliced
- 1 Bulb garlic peeled, crushed
- 1/4 Cup Sesame Oil
- 2 Tablespoons Poaching Stock
Instructions
- Blanch chicken for about a minute in salted boiling water.
- Rinse chicken under cold running water.
- Combine chicken, pandan leaves, garlic, ginger, salt, and water in slow cooker. Cook for 4-6 hours on low.
- Prepare ginger dipping sauce. Process ginger, garlic, sesame oil, stock, and salt in a food processor.
If you've ever been to any part of Southeast Asia, then you've most probably had this dish at least for once. This iconic Singaporean chicken rice dish is actually very simple to make and basically relies on simple cooking techniques rather than the use of complex ingredients.
Let's get cooking and I'll show you along the way how to prepare this dish exactly like how it can be had from those Asian food hawker stalls.
Tip number 1 : Blanch the whole chicken in salted boiling water. This step will extract any impurities from the chicken which is essential for it to render a very clear broth and for it to achieve that very clean skin it is well-known for. Wait for your pot of water to fully come to a boil before dropping the chicken in. Putting it in cold water then bringing the pot to a boil altogether would “cook” the chicken too much, consequently losing a lot of its flavor. Add about a tablespoon of salt. Don't be afraid that a tablespoon or two might be too much. This salt would aid cleansing the bird rather than flavoring it. We'll wash it off later eventually.
After about a minute or two of parboiling, rinse the chicken well in cold running water to wash off more of its impurities.
Tip number 2 : To stay true to the authentic dish's aroma and flavor, these pandan leaves are a must and without substitute. You can certainly do without these leaves and still end up with a very excellent chicken dish, though it may no longer deserve the name Hainanese Chicken.
Tip number 3 : Here's where most home cooks fail when trying to recreate this dish at home. The whole chicken must be poached and not boiled. Poaching starts at 65C but should not go beyond 80C. Going beyond or near boiling point would rip off the chicken skin and would cause the chicken to lose most of its juices to the cooking liquid. No need for a thermometer here. A good visual indicator for poaching temperature would be steam gently breaking off the liquid's surface without any active bubbling.
In this attempt, I've found that a low setting on the crockpot does achieve this ideal temperature. Depending on the size of chicken you'll be using, look at around 4-6 hours of cooking time. Lately I've been using the 6 quart SmartPot, which is one of my all-time favorites.
Layer those pandan leaves and aromatics at the bottom of the pot to act as a buffer that'll keep the chicken skin from sticking. The chicken would also serve as a weight to keep those leaves from floating all over the surface of your pot.
Add in water or chicken stock to get the chicken fully submerged and you're almost done.
This dish could not be complete without a ginger dipping sauce at least. You may choose to buy them readily prepared but making them at home will always be better and should not be that difficult to do. To a food processor, combine about 1/4 cup of sliced ginger, about a bulb of garlic(peeled), a quarter cup of sesame oil, about 2 tablespoons of the chicken's poaching liquid, and a pinch of salt. Give it a few pulses until smooth but still slightly grainy.
Some prefer to have some chili sauce together with this dish as well. Pretty much the same procedure as above, but adding red chilis instead of ginger. The amount of chilis you'll use would of course depend on your tolerance for spice. Personally, here's where I prefer store-bought chili sauce rather than making it fresh. Fresh chilis just differ in spice level everytime, making it difficult to come up with a standard recipe.
Tip number 4 : Notice how gelatinous the chicken skin looks? After the chicken is done poaching, dip it whole in a bowl of ice water and leave it there for about 3 minutes. Take it out of the bowl, allow any excess water to drip off, then brush the whole chicken with some sesame oil.
Final tip : Use the chicken's poaching liquid in place of water to cook your rice. The flavor, aroma, and chicken fat in that broth would give you that Hainanese rice that goes standard with this dish.
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Ingredients
- 1 Whole Chicken
- 1 Bunch Pandan Leaves
- 1 Thumb-sized Ginger peeled, sliced
- 1 Bulbs garlic peeled, crushed
- Salt
- Chili Sauce optional
For the Ginger Dipping Sauce
- 1/4 Cup Ginger peeled, sliced
- 1 Bulb garlic peeled, crushed
- 1/4 Cup Sesame Oil
- 2 Tablespoons Poaching Stock
Instructions
- Blanch chicken for about a minute in salted boiling water.
- Rinse chicken under cold running water.
- Combine chicken, pandan leaves, garlic, ginger, salt, and water in slow cooker. Cook for 4-6 hours on low.
- Prepare ginger dipping sauce. Process ginger, garlic, sesame oil, stock, and salt in a food processor.
Frances
I tried but four hours in slow cooker is too long. I stopped at 3 hours but my chicken is already overcooked! I think I will stick with the sous vide method as the chicken is moist and just cooked!
Food For Net
Slow cooker chicken does tend to overcook, at least with white meat.
Rachel
Following the recipe, and taking note of what Frances has said, I checked my chicken after 3 hours, turned it over for the last hour. Total cooking time of 4 hours, my chicken turned out good. I guess it all depends on the size of bird you use, mine was a 1.7kg chicken, smaller birds will take lesser cooking time, likewise more time required for larger birds.