Oven steamed chicken 白斩鸡 recipe

Chicken rice is a popular dish in Malaysia. It can easily be found in any hawker centre or food court in Malaysia. The traditional style is using poached chicken and served with oily rice and dipping sauce. Timing is very important to produce a good poached chicken as it should be tender and smooth. Hence, it is not an easy dish as it looks. In fact, it consists of multiple steps and ingredients to bring out a great poached chicken.

Don't worry, I'm not going to create a complicated dish. Instead, I'm sharing a simplified version of steamed chicken that could be served as chicken rice using an oven. Besides that, your kitchen would remain clean after cooking.

Recipe:

1 whole chicken

1 piece of ginger

A bunch of spring opinions/scallions

Seasoning for chicken:

Sesame oil

Shaoxing cooking wine

Salt

Pepper

1. Cut ginger into slices and spring onions into shorter stems.

2. Rub salt and sprinkle some pepper on the chicken including the inner part (stomach of the chicken).

3. Brush shaoxing cooking wine on the chicken. Follow by sesame oil.

4. Lay enough aluminium foil on the kitchen top or table where you're going to wrap the chicken. Lay sufficient parchment paper on top of the aluminium oil. Bear in mind that there will be chicken stock after cooking. Make sure both the aluminium foil and parchment paper are big enough to wrap the whole chicken and contain the stock.

5. Put 2 slices of ginger and 2 stems of spring onions on the parchment paper. Arrange chicken on top. Put another 2 slices of ginger and 2 stems of spring opinions on top of the chicken. Stuff all the remaining ginger slices and spring onions into the stomach of the chicken.

6. Wrap the chicken with the parchment paper, follow by the aluminium foil.

7. Baked at 190c for 1 hour 35 mins. The baking time depends on the size of the chicken. In this recipe, a 1.1kg chicken is used.

8. Rest the chicken in oven for 5-10mins when it's done.

9. Cut the chicken and serve with rice and dipping sauce.

Note: The stock produced from the oven steamed chicken can be used to cook oily rice.

Dipping sauce:

1 tablespoon oil

8 cloves garlic

4 shallots

3/4 jar of Masterfood fresh ginger or you can mince a piece of ginger

A bunch of spring onions and corianders

Light soya sauce

Sesame oil

1. Chop garlic and shallot finely.

2. Chop spring onions and corianders.

2. Heat oil in the frying pan. Add garlic and shallot. Stir fry until lightly brown.

3. Add ginger and stir fry until mix well.

4. Add spring onions and corianders and mix well.

5. Add light soya sauce and sesame oil to taste.