I'm tired. I'm too tired mommy. Mommy I'm so tired. Wake me up, mommy!
What's up guys? Welcome back to Rack of Lam!
If you're new to my channel, my name is Maggie, a busy mom with a passion for cooking and simplified ways
to make delicious food for the family. I'm actually really stoked about today's video because it's for
a dish that is near and dear to my heart. It's also one of my dad's favorite, 海南雞飯, or
Hainanese chicken over rice. So I've made this dish a good number of times now using two methods.
The first one involves boiling a whole chicken over the stove top and the simpler way involves
pressure cooking leg quarters in my Instant Pot. I find myself using the latter method more often
due to my busy schedule and I just love the fact that you can sorta throw everything into the pot
set it, forget it and come back to use the broth to make rice in your rice cooker. While this
isn't the traditional way to make 海南雞飯, what's most important is that my family
absolutely loves this dish, so I encourage you to try out my recipe and let me know what you think!
What's also critical for this dish is a delicious ginger scallion sauce that is bomb diggity bomb.
I'll show you guys exactly how it's made in my next video so make sure you stay tuned.
If you enjoyed watching, don't forget to like, share, subscribe and hit the notification bell.
The ingredients you will need include: sesame oil
chicken stock,
salt,
half an onion, two scallions, a large thumb of ginger and six cloves of garlic.
Roughly mince your garlic.
Slice your ginger.
Cut your scallions into two inch pieces
and dice your onion.
Last but not least you will need three leg quarters. I purchased these
from my local Asian supermarket. They're fairly affordable, usually costing around 99 cents per pound.
What I like to do before cooking these things is trimming any excess skin or fat off.
It's a completely optional step, so feel free to leave them on if you'd like. It just makes me feel
a tad healthier. Now if you want your seasoned rice to taste more authentic, you can render oil from
this excess skin and fat and add the oil into your rice when you're ready to cook it for that extra
boost in flavor and aroma. After all, the rice that accompanies Hainanese chicken is referred to as
"油饭" in Cantonese, literally translated as oil rice. What I also like to do is exfoliate
the chicken skin with some salt. I actually found this tip on a food blog and must say
that rubbing the skin with salt results in cleaner, glossier and smoother chicken skin.
If you've had 海南雞飯 you know good skin is a must, so give the skin a nice spa treatment.
After the spa, give the chicken skin a quick shower to wash off any excess salt and remove
all the water. And I know washing raw poultry is a controversial topic, so feel free to skip this step.
Ooh look at that shine on your skin girl!
When the prep work is all done plug in your Instant Pot and hit the sauté button.
When the hot indicator is on, pour one tablespoon of oil into the pot, swirling to coat evenly.
Transfer your diced onion, minced garlic, scallions and
ginger into the pot and stir for about 30 seconds.
Next, you're gonna pour one and a half cups of chicken stock into the pot.
I'm using salted chicken stock by Kirkland, but feel free to use an
unsalted version and adjust your salt according to taste.
Here I am adding one teaspoon of salt, but feel free to add more if your stock is unsalted,
then give everything a good stir to blend the ingredients together.
Now, you're going to add the leg quarters into the broth, skin side down.
Once they're all in, cancel the sauté function, close the lid, then pressure cook the chicken
for 10 minutes, making sure that the steam valve is set to sealing position.
When time's up, allow the Instant Pot to naturally release all the pressure,
which takes about 15 minutes. Right before that happens, prepare an ice bath for your chicken.
Remove the chicken from the Instant Pot and dunk them into the ice bath to stop the cooking process.
This ensures that the skin is still springy.
Subsequently, you're going to strain everything from
the broth by pouring it into a bowl over a sieve.
This is the broth that you'll be using to cook your rice so it's a good time to taste it and
add more salt if necessary. Now I'm going to prepare the rice in my rice cooker using
2 cups of jasmine rice. I have cooked the rice on my stovetop and in the Instant Pot before
but since I usually don't have a lot of time to spare, I prefer cooking my rice this way.
As I've mentioned in my fish congee video, I typically wash my rice about three to four times.
What's different here is I try to pour as much water out as possible
to avoid the excess water from diluting the broth.
Once that's done, pour the chicken broth into your rice pot with a 1 to 1 rice to broth ratio.
Since I'm cooking two cups of jasmine rice, I will be adding two cups of the broth.
I'm using the line markings to help with the measurements, but if you like using
your finger to measure your water, please keep in mind that the broth is still extremely hot,
unless you had it sitting out for a while. To save time, I like to add a dash of sesame oil,
but as I've mentioned before, you can use oil rendered from excess chicken fat.
I'm also selecting the quick cooking option, which will be done in about 20 minutes.
While the rice is cooking, line a dish with some paper towel and place your chicken leg quarters
onto the towel, skin side down. When they're adequately dried, brush the skin with some
sesame oil. A quarter to half a teaspoon should be enough, but feel free to use more if you like.
Congratulations, your Hainanese chicken is ready!
If you've got some time, you may debone the leg quarters and cut the chicken into pieces.
Still waiting for the rice to cook? Prep your ginger scallion sauce! Oh, that's right, you're
waiting for the recipe for my next video. Gotcha! I'll post it next week, so stay tuned!
Ah, looks like the rice is ready, so let's assemble our dish!
Translation: Hainanese Chicken Rice with extra ginger scallion sauce!
This is an entrée you must order at a Malaysian restaurant.
Either as a rice box to go, for yourself, or for dining in with your family.
My family loves ordering a whole Hainanese chicken with multiple 油饭 "yao fan" to pair with the chicken.
We also love ginger scallion sauce so stick around to see how it's done.
We usually have enough leftovers for lunch the next day.
Pair it with some sliced cucumbers and tomato like they do at the restaurant.
If you enjoyed my video, don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Thank you so much for watching!