Singaporean Chicken Rice

Try this one time at a Chinese restaurant in Paris, and I thought it was difficult to make, and after google some recipes, I found a good one. Click here for the original recipe. Well, it is actually super easy to make. The most important thing to make a perfect chicken rice is the quality of the chicken. You need to get a free-range chicken or poulet fermier. If you’re feeding the whole family, better to get whole free-range chicken. As I was the only one eating this, I bought only 2 chicken thighs.

Ingredients

For the chicken

• 2 chicken thighs
• Fresh ginger (peel and slice it into 4 thin pieces)
• 2 stalks of green onion (roughly chopped), if you cannot find green onion, you can replace it with onion (roughly chopped)
• 1 tablespoon of sesame oil
• sea salt
• Water

For the rice

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 cloves garlic (crushed)
• 1 cm section of ginger (crushed)
• 2 cups long-grain perfumed rice
• 2 cups reserved chicken poaching broth
• 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon salt

For the chilli sauce

• 1 Garlic (chopped)
• 1 shallot (chopped)
• 2 red chillies (roughly chopped)
• 1 tomato (roughly chopped)
• 2 tea spoon of sugar
• 1 tea spoon of salt
• 1 table spoon of lime juice

Method

First. Cook the chicken

• Before cooking the chicken, you need to clean the chicken with a small handful sea salt in order to get  rid of the dirt and any loose skin. Rub and exfoliate the chicken with sea salt. Wash it with running water. Set a side.
• Heat a vegetable oil over a medium heat, add the green onions and ginger, stir for couple minutes. Place the chicken, and add some water to cover the chicken. Bring the pot to boil and immediately turn the heat down. Let it simmer for 30 minutes.
• When the chicken cooked through. Lift and transfer it into a bath of ice water. Discharge the green onion and ginger, and reserve the poaching broth to cook your rice, sauce and the soup.

Second. Cook the rice

I cook the rice using a rice cooker. If you don’t have one, you can just simply use a medium sauce pan and follow below steps:

• Place the rice into a rice cooker bowl, fill it water and use your hand to wash the rice. Tilt bowl and discharge the water. Repeat 3 to 4 times, until water is clear.
• Heat a vegetable oil in a sauce pan over a medium heat. Add ginger and garlic and stir it until soften. Add the sesame oil. Pour it into rice cooker bowl. Mix it well.
• Add 2 cups of left over chicken broth into rice cooker bowl. Put your finger in it, level it out and place your index finger so that it is touching the surface of the rice. if it is not enough, add more water so that it comes up to your first knuckle. Add some salt.
• If you use a rice cooker, put the rice cooker bowl into it then just turn it on and let it cook.
• If you use a pan, bring the rice to boil. Turn the heat down to low, cover the pot and cook for 15 minutes. remove from heat and set a side with lid still on for 5 to 10 minutes.

While you cook the rice, take the chicken out from the ice water, rub it with sesame oil in order to avoid the chicken from drying out.

Third, Chilies sauce

• In a small sauce pan, put a cup of chicken broth, add garlic, shallot, tomato, chillies until soften. Let it simmer until the water reduced. Turn off the heat.
• Blend it using a blender or a mortar.
• Add some juice of lime

Finally, serve time..

Heat the left-over chicken broth, season with salt and pepper if necessary. Add some green onion.

Serve the chicken with rice, chilies sauce, cilantro or cucumber and hot chicken broth. Sprinkle the rice with fried onions.