One of mine and everyone’s favorite chicken recipes in Singapore is Hainanese style boiled Chicken Rice. If you like chicken food or dishes, you will like this local Chinese food, originated from Hainan, an island of southern China in the South China Sea. Since the migration of Chinese from China to Singapore, Hainanese from that island brought their recipes here, and slowly transformed this chicken dish into the style of what Singaporean loves to eat today. As like when you think of Thailand, you think of Tom Yam Soup.
If you think this is just another easy chicken recipe that everyone knows to cook, you are wrong. Because this style of cooking chicken has been greatly commercialized and became one of the top Singapore dishes recommended by various food news, gourmets, or even celebrities.
It should be greatly different from the original, but that is why it is so special and localized. Rest assured you could find many places that serve this dish, which does not require you to pay more than SGD$3-$4 currently. You can find this cooked chicken & rice selling within every town in a popular state locally.
Of course, NOT every places that sells Hainanese Chicken Rice have good recipe or cooking skills that could let you indulge into the reminiscence of their stalls or restaurants whenever the “chicken” urge get arisen. My favorite places for this dish tasted over the past don’t even lie to expensive restaurants, hence, don’t let the price fool you. Just a small Chicken Rice stall within a hawker center or local coffee-shop could let you never stop queuing up and patronize frequently like an addict, if they are really that good.
The food preparation for this boiled Hainanese style Chicken Rice is widely known to use only fresh healthy chicken in local markets or wholesales from local slaughtering houses, and not frozen chickens. With almost every part of the hen(s) used to cooked up its rice, chicken soup, chicken sauce, or gravy etc. In addition, never forget the chilli sauce, which is typically made by fresh red chillies, young gingers with some vinegar, salt, sugar and so on.
All the chicken tastes in a whole start from the rice itself, whether you like spicy chillies or not. There are even smooth smashed gingers and quality sweet soy sauce for your option. To boil the whole chiken, according to one of my friends’ secret recipe, is to boil them slowing on a stove, and transferring the chicken to a container later on, that consist of cold water and ice cubes once they are nicely cooked. The reason to do this is to preserved the freshness and tenderness of the chicken meat itself; it will not grow old as time passes by.
Accompany with the hot rice and soup, now it is ready for your Hainanese style Chicken Rice delights! Some foreigners might misunderstand the slight coldness of the chicken meat, and thought it is not freshly served, yet it has the best tenderness and tastes once you get in touch with it. Don’t wait for the meat to get any warmer, if it does, it might not be as great. The best way to enjoy this cuisine, is to separate the rice with the meat while ordering onto two plates.
Most stalls within the hawker center or coffee-shop will put the meat onto the rice when served if you just tell them “you want a plate of Chicken Rice”, which I often declined. However, the price will be slightly higher, in around 50 cents if it get separated with yummy chicken sauce on-the-plate and perhaps with vegetables of any kind in addition. Wow, another market price…
Another thing to take note of when you buy Chicken Rice at economic places is that the cooked chicken thighs, wings and chicken drumsticks normally are slightly more expensive than the chicken breast or other parts if you order it directly, since it is much more tender. Some of the famous great stalls with economic prices I recommended are located at Whampoa Drive, Jurong East town, Maxwell hawker center and a one at Bishan town in Singapore.
If you dislike Hainanese style boiled chicken, one word for you, just turn to Fried Chicken or Chicken Cutlet that might be found on the same premise.
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