we're in Singapore and we're here to eat, we can't wait to show you some of the best
local food this island has to offer
the national pastime in Singapore is eating
and why wouldn't it be when the food is so delicious and diverse this is our third video
from Singapore and we're traveling all over the island to show you the best
local food watch out for foods you'll find nowhere else, the best chicken rice
on the island and a whole lot more, in this four-part series we're hunting down
authentic Singaporean food and eating where the locals eat you don't want to miss
this series get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry
let's eat
with this Singapore food series besides showing you the classic
Singaporean dishes we want to show you some more unusual local foods
so foods that you might not have seen before, we're at our first stop and we've come
to a food center and we're here to eat sup tulang merah which is red bone
soup this is a crazy dish, let's go and get some
we've got our sup tulang merah in front of us and ohhhh it looks good and
how crazy is the colour it is this bright red so what the dish is is
basically just mutton bones that have been cooked for hours and hours and then
coated with this red gravy there's a little bit of cabbage
covered over the top and then there's some sliced French stick to go with it
so basically you just dip the French stick into that gravy now with this dish it is
all about the marrow and it's a messy dish, it's a fun dish to eat you've really
got to get in with your hands so that's what I am gonna do I'm gonna get this
one here which has a lot of meat on it still
and just get right in
ohhhh yea
man that meat is beautiful the gravy has a tiny bit of spice but
overall it's quite sweet very flavoursome I'm gonna try and get some of this
ooops some of this marrow out so you can see it hiding in there it's been cooking
for so long the marrow should just slip right out of the bone
ohhh man it just dissolved in my mouth that was so meaty and flavorsome and this
dish is uniquely Singaporean it was created by the mamak community so the
Indian Muslim community in the 1950s and this is the
just one of the most unique dishes we've ever found in Singapore we first ate at this stall
a couple of years ago our friend brought us here and I've never forgotten the
taste of this meal oh man
the mutton
it has such a beautiful flavour
it literally is just falling off the bone there's a lot of really soft
tendon in there as well oh man
oh it's so good if you've seen our other videos you'll know that I'm really into just
this type of food, so dishes that are made from every bit of the
animal, the scraps, the bones I'm really into this type of eating
let's just grab some of this French stick
dip that in the gravy alright
super soft bread that gravy's got quite a strong tomato-y flavour
there is absolutely no way to eat this dish gracefully but I don't
think I did too badly and every bit of meat and tendon has been
stripped off of that bone and the marrow too ohhh this was such a good time
Singapore is a really multicultural society and that diversity is reflected
in its food culture we're standing in line at our next spot waiting for an
apam which is a South Indian dish
I've got one great looking apam here so it's from a stall called Heavens
which is really popular here in this food center and it looks unreal so an apam
is a rice flour pancake essentially it's made up of fermented rice flour
and a whole lot of coconut milk and this one has the addition of an egg which
is just under there and a whole lot of processed cheese dumped on top so it
gets put in a small shallow pan it's a very very runny batter
watery batter so she just rolls it around the pan chucks the lid on and it
cooks very quickly because it's incredibly thin and this is the house
specialty from Heavens so this one comes with the egg and the cheese but also a
whole load of shredded coconut and a whole lot of this orange sugar which is
just really finely finely granulated gula melaka but it's dyed orange and it's
dyed orange just to give the dish a bit of colour the orange doesn't add any flavour
or anything like that so this apam can come with multiple things curries and dal and
whatnot but we went with the house specialty I'm gonna rip in because this
is egg underneath here I think it'll probably be a solid egg yea so look at
that so it's not a runny egg under there and then the cheese all breaks up let's
just break it up a little bit ohhh it's nice and crunchy on that edge
I want to get a bit from the center okay there we go
and then we can get a bunch of shredded coconut on there as well this is quite
tricky let's go spoon action so we'll put some sugar on
top, shredded coconut, apam
oh wow
that has got a beautiful flavour that shredded coconut is really strong it's not
super dry that shredded coconut so it's quite it's fresh I think they've ground it
fresh it's got a really strong burst of coconut flavour and then you get a real
salty and sweet balance from the savoury side and the sugar side you can see in
the center it's kind of a bit more built up it's a little bit spongier in there
a little bit thicker and then it's super crispy on the edges I'm gonna grab some
more from the centre cause that processed cheese has such a lovely saltiness to it
now I'm not a huge fan of processed cheese to be honest but it works quite
well in these dishes which are pretty unusual
the egg is really creamy the flavours just work really well so
you've got a really strong hit of savoury and then a really strong head of sweet
this is a super good dish
this is a really really great
Hawker Center which we come to every time we're in Singapore it's got a lot
of selection and a lot of really high quality hawker stalls
and it's set right in the heart of a public housing block it's called Ghim Moh
and one stall that
we absolutely love and that we eat at every time we come Singapore is the one
behind us it serves Hainanese chicken rice which is the national dish of
Singapore you can't come here and not eat that dish and I reckon
this is the best Hainanese chicken rice you'll find in Singapore
they say that the national pastime is queuing for food and that was a long
queue we waited about 45 minutes for our portions of chicken rice but it's gonna
be worth it let me show you what we've got
so this here is the Hainanese chicken so it's just poached chicken it's in a bit
of a soy sauce broth and then this here is the oily rice we've got some
condiments this is minced ginger and then some chilli and then just some
chicken soup now in Singapore the most important component of Hainanese chicken
rice is not actually the chicken it is in fact the rice the rice is supposed to
be really oily and fragrant and it's cooked in the poaching stock along
with things like pandan leaves and ginger and garlic and when you go up to the
stall you're hit with a wave of those aromatics it's so fragrant, really really
strong, the Hainanese cook their chicken in a really specialised way so what they do
is they poach the chicken whole and then once it's cooked
they whip it out dunk it in cold water and then they hang it to dry and it
becomes really silky but enough talking let's get in I'm just gonna compose
the ultimate mouthful so I've got a lot of that oily rice, let's get a bit of chicken
on there, piece with some skin urgh get on there and then I'm gonna pop some ginger
and then some chilli on there as well
holy moly it's simple perfection, every element is just perfectly cooked, the rice is
really separate so the grains are really loose, full of flavour
really moist you can see that the rice is like glistening with oil and then the
chicken is melt-in-your-mouth the flesh is really tender and silky and
moist
the skin was really silky, you've got the hit of the ginger and then that slight zing of the
chilli, it is just perfection
I'm gonna go for just a bite of rice with nothing else and see what it tastes like
you could just eat that on its own
it's got so much flavour
it's infused with a subtle chicken-y
flavour, it's really oily, really
moist, ohhh so good
we're zipping all over Singapore today to find the best renditions of these
local dishes and the next snack that we're having is a uniquely Singaporean
food it's called kueh tutu and it's a sweet snack
these little beauties are the kueh tutu so look at this we ordered two flavours one
filling is gula melaka which is coconut palm sugar and coconut and then
the other one hiding in there is crushed peanuts and a little bit of sugar and
they're sitting on a pandan leaf so the cake is really special it's just made
out of a rice flour that's been really finely ground and then it's filled,
steamed and then popped onto the leaf I'm just gonna get in really quickly and eat
this because it's best to eat them when they're straight from the steamer still really hot
hmm so fragrant, the cake mixture so the rice flour mixture is a little bit chewy a
little bit sticky but very soft and then the inside is just
beautiful and caramelised and sweet and a little bit smoky even and this is true
heritage food so the lady who's manning the stall it's actually her father's recipe
he started selling kueh tutu in the 1930s on the streets of Singapore just
on a little by a little street cart it's incredible such a great snack
it is really neat watching these being made so it's a very quick process she
takes some of the rice flour mixture chucks it on the little mold put in
whatever filling you have there is an original version also which has no
filling once the filling is in chuck some more of that rice flour on and then it
has a little cloth put on it and it gets chucked on the steamer and it's not on
that steamer for very long so it's in some beautiful little stainless steel
molds and that's what gives it this sort of flower looking shape once it comes
out of the out of the mold although it kind of looks like a looks like a looks like a
tutu but that's not why it's called quite kueh tutu it's called kueh tutu because of a
sound that the charcoal used to make on the original steamer when it was a
charcoal driven steamer this is the the peanut one
hmm hmm it's so light that outside not too
sweet and the peanut mixture um having watched it being put in when she was
cooking it
I thought it was gonna be really dry it's actually a little bit sticky
like wet and sticky ahhh unreal this is such a classic street snack one of those
unusual dishes you don't see very much but has been around for a very long time
the sort of thing we absolutely love to track down and show you guys on this
channel