Today we're bringing you to a restaurant that has been cooking chicken covered
in mud and buried in hot charcoals and ash for over 40 years, you have got to
check out this cooking method and the incredible results
we're in Selangor, Malaysia, I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate
we hope you're hungry, let's eat
we're really excited to show you this amazing
cooking process of this Beggar's Chicken that we're going to be eating
today so this is actually part of the kitchen and it doesn't look like a
kitchen looks more like a construction site if I'm honest so what happens is
they have this chicken that they've marinated in all sorts of sauces,
they've stuffed the chicken full of ingredients and then they come out here
and there's this massive pile of earth they take the earth and they put it in
this earth churning machine, mix it with water and create this mud and then they
pack the mud on top of the chicken, the chicken is wrapped in layers of paper
they pop the mud on top, encase it so it's like a parcel and then they pop
that parcel into this really hot, ash filled oven and let it bake for 8
hours
we just watched the chicken being packed with that mud, too thin of a layer of mud
means that the chicken will burn and cook far too quickly and not retain its
juiciness and too thick of a layer of mud means that it just will take
hours and hours to cook so it's a real art form getting the exact thickness of
that mud onto that chicken, they then take the chicken and bring it over to
this oven here and the heat coming off of this thing is crazy I can feel it
almost burning my arm, so they dig quite a shallow hole in the ash to pop the
chicken onto they put it in the hole and then they cover it with the ash then
they put some hot charcoals on top of the chicken and then have the fan
blowing so that it fans that flame or that heat which is in that charcoal
and then it just cooks for about eight hours in the heat
our Beggar's Chicken has been transferred into this wheelbarrow and it's ready to
be cracked open, the heat emanating from this thing is still quite strong but
I've got this hammer right here and I'm just gonna give it a bit of a bash and
see what happens, all right let's go, wow that mud is just falling off, incredible
it's still pretty hot I'm gonna rip the rest of the mud shell off of that
chicken, wow! You can see the chicken's been wrapped in the paper and then
it's been tied with string, ohhh the smells coming from this thing is nuts
it's like a ripping into a birthday present I'm gonna untie this string and
get into it, this is so exciting okay so that was the first
layer of paper and then I'm gonna rip open this one here oh wow we're getting
closer to the treat and now we're ready to transfer the chicken to our plate
we're sitting down to our lunch feast so we've got our Beggar's Chicken it's
sitting in this amazing looking silky sauce, we've ordered a country fish
which is a reconstituted mackerel but more about that later and then we've got
a plate of mixed veggies which looks really vibrant there's all sorts in
there and we're gonna eat this all with some white rice but back to the Beggar's
Chicken because I'm dying to break into this thing
what it has been marinated in is actually a mix of soy sauce some Shaoxing rice wine,
some sesame oil so that's been rubbed all over the chicken before it's been
wrapped in that paper and then that clay but inside it's also been stuffed
with a mixture of herbs, so I think what we'll do is just break into the middle of it and
see what's hiding in there, the wow the meat just falls apart there was barely any
resistance when I cracked into it and look it's just filled with all these
amazing goodies so I can see here pieces of dong gui which is a Chinese herb also
known as Angelica root, there's some wolf-berries or goji berries, there's red dates I'm
told yea there's one stuck here so a red date and gosh the fragrance
coming up from or rising up from this chicken is so herbal-y or warming
oh it just smells so good and I reckon that these herbs are going to impart such a beautiful
almost medicinal flavour to the chicken
that was an incredible process to film but I want
to get on with the incredible process of eating this chicken so I'm just gonna
try the chicken on some white rice and I've spooned lots of that that sauce or
broth that's with it, the marinade and because it's been roasted in the clay
the skin is it's not crispy there's so much moisture in the chicken and it just
ripped apart so easily just with chopsticks just peeling off bits of
chicken but let's eat it I mean we can't just keep talking about this we have to
try it so I've got a big bit of chicken not much rice let's just try it in its
natural form covered in that broth
it's got such a herbal-y flavour and the broth obviously has a lot of chicken
juice in it so it's got a a real chicken underlying like a chicken soup sort of
flavour in the broth but then the herbs are very very strong, we'll try a bit more
look at this huge piece okay I'm gonna eat it all in one go so it's got skin
all on the one side the flesh all underneath
it is so good, that was quite a big mouthful it's
amazing because it's so moist and it just falls apart but it's actually still
quite, not chewy but has a bit of chew or a bit of bite I actually expected it
would just collapse in my mouth but it's still got that beautiful texture of
eating chicken, let's try some of those rice it's just been
soaked in that marinade and one of these Angelica roots
I've got a little goji berry in there too so the goji berry the root and that rice and you can
see how it's just beautifully soaked
so that root is what's giving a really herbal-y taste I think, it tastes so much
like walking into a Chinese medicine store that real beautiful hit you get of
all the different herbs that's kind of a bit of a way to I guess explain the
flavour that I'm getting from this and it's just, it's so good
let's grab some more off here, you can just see I mean look at it, look at that
bone that just fell off there's a big piece of chicken you've got the entire
foot here so this it is the entire chicken this dish
including the neck so the neck has been stuffed back inside the cavity you can see
that here so the only thing missing is the head just look at it, it just
absolutely falls apart I mean, it's unreal, ok one more big bit
of juicy chicken no rice no anything just chicken
oh, oh wow, like that flavour is so so good
my mouth was watering as I was filming
Thomas eating the chicken I have just ripped off some of that drumstick what
I'm gonna do is just dip it in that sauce it looks amazing, all right
let's just go with the chicken in one big mouthful,
Wow, mmm, mmmm that chicke is so silky and as Thomas said
the overriding flavour is that medicinal taste that's coming from all
those herbs there's a wealth of Chinese herbs in this dish as we talked about so
I'm just gonna grab a few I've got this red date here and then some goji
berries and have that with my next mouthful. Oh this chicken
such strong medicinal flavours as we talked about
and that chicken is just so juicy because it's been trapped in that clay shell
the juices have just sort of permeated and just circulated, the juice from the
chicken itself as well as the liquid that they've added to
the cooking process this is incredible, now this chickens foot has been calling
my name it's really just made up skin,
there's not much meat at all and then just some cartilage so you basically
just give it a big old bite
so soft and then just eat round the bones
that's really satisfying, this is such an epic meal
this restaurant has some really
unusual dishes and we had to order this Country Fish so it's a whole mackerel
but what they've done is that they've removed all the flesh before cooking it, they've mashed that
meat up into a paste with some herbs and spices, I can see chilli in there,
they've deboned the fish and then they've stuffed that paste back in and cooked it
and so it's a boneless fish paste fish really
it that's really interesting so I'm just going to grab a piece and just try
it by itself
that fish-paste is quite soft, it's got a little bit of chew, a really strong flavour
because mackerel does have a really intense fishy flavour and then that skin is also
quite chewy, we've got some chilli sauce here so what I'm gonna do is just
dip this piece in that and see what that tastes like
give it a big old dunk
that was really worth adding to so really fresh fiery spice and then that fish is really chewy
I really enjoy that, really intense and it's gonna go perfectly with this meal
now this dish comes from China and the name Beggar's Chicken seems to relate to
a nobleman was riding through the forest one day and he smelt the most incredible
smell and what he found was a beggar had just cooked a chicken, a
chicken that he'd found in the forest using this method so he cooked it
underground and he'd just opened up that clay and the smell was filling the air
in the forest and so the nobleman took that recipe or took the idea back to the
court or back to the to the Emperor and it became one of the dishes that they
cooked for the Emperor and I love those sorts of stories about food because they
give it a real like meaning behind it and who knows if that's true
but I think it's a great story and obviously the dish would have progressed
in the years because if it is true and there
was a beggar in the forest making this dish I don't imagine he had rice wine
and soy sauce and all the things you need to make the dish as it is today but
it has evolved to this and it is so so good
we also have this vibrant
looking vegetable dish to tuck into it's got a tonne of vegetables in it
it's got some eggplant which is known as brinjal here, red chilli, there's okra or
ladyfingers there's some beans and then these pods are petai or stink beans it's
all been wok tossed together with sambal belacan which is a fermented
shrimp chilli condiment I'm just gonna grab some beans and some stink beans
and some okra so the stick beans don't have a smell
but they say that the way the stink shows itself is when you go to the loo and
you pee and it smells then so sort of like with asparagus it makes you
have smelly pee anyway, it's really good, really crunchy a little bit
bitter but that sambal belacan has just given it a really savoury, chilli hit
all these vegetables have just been cooked to perfection
so they've still got crunch, and they've really been coated in that
spicy sambal belacan so it's just really good to go with the more sort of
subtle flavours of the chicken and then that strong tasting fish
I'm just gonna rip into
that breast meat look at that that's the breast it is unreal how juicy
this chicken is, now when you come here you've gotta book the whole chicken so
that is why we have a complete chicken and you have to book one day in advance
they do a whole lot of other meats as well and all the meats that go
into the oven that we've shown you have to be booked the day before and
boy is it worth it wow what a lunch, incredible if you enjoyed this video
don't forget to pop down below hit thumbs up and hit subscribe for heaps more
food adventures, that was such an exciting video to film we really hope
you enjoyed it thank you so much for watching, we hope you inspired you to eat
and explore like a traveler not a tourist, we'll see you next time, jumpa lagi!
your blogger