today on hot Thai kitchen we are making kao mun gai Sawaddee ka welcome to hot Thai
kitchen today we're making one of the most popular street foods in Thailand and that
is kao mun gai known in english as Hainanese chicken rice and that's because the island
of Hainan is where this dish was originated from and I'm particularly fond of this dish
because my grandmother was actually born and raised in Hainan so she pretty much makes this
dish every time I see her so now I'm going to share it with you so first your Thai listen
what does kao mun gai mean kao mun means fatty rice and it refers to the fact that we're going
to cook our rice and chicken fat and gai means chicken so let's take a look at our ingredients
so here's our chicken now I like to get my chicken at an Asian butcher because then I
get the feet in the head and everything so I have more stock material so our cooking water will be
more flavorful now this particular chicken is what they call Ching ping chicken which means
that they're free-range they were active so the meat is quite flavorful but they're also smaller
this guy is about two and a half pounds which is actually perfect so I'm going to first cut
off his head and his feet so we're going to take that but I'm going to save the skin because the
skin around the neck has a lot of fat which I want to then render for our rice so in goes the head
cut off his feet I'm going to crack the bones a little bit just to help the the bones release the
flavor a little quicker okay and now what I'm going to do is collect chicken fat we want as
much as possible for our rice usually there's a bunch around the skin around the neck flap right
here so there see that that usually comes from the next we want to save that in the cavity by the bum
there's a bunch you can collect one last check to see if I left anything I'll deal with that later
I know it doesn't look very good right now but in here we're also going to add all of our stock
aromatics and that's all our cilantro roots ginger garlic and white peppercorns that I've crushed
and also our onions and we're basically going to get this to a quick boil to sort of render
the stock so that then we can cook our chicken in something flavorful so at this point you can
cook your chicken just like this or you can brine the chicken if you've got the time and you want
to make it extra juicy if you're going to brine it though I'm going to make a very dilute brine
solution so what I do is one gallon of water to about two tablespoons of salt which is not very
salty at all because you don't want the chicken meat to be too well-seasoned we're going to make
a really delicious dipping sauce it's quite salty so the chicken meat is already well seasoned then
the whole thing is just overkill so about two hours for a small chicken like this is an American
standard size chicken three to four hours is good in cold cold brine so we're going to wait for that
stock to come to a simmer and let it go for about 20 minutes or so and then we're going to go cook
our chicken I almost forgot you want to remove the wishbone from the chicken first and the wishbone
is basically the collar bone of the chicken you don't absolutely have to take it out but if you
don't it'll get in the way of when you go to carve out the chicken breast and basically you want to
sit the chicken up so that it's full it would be facing me but I going to face you so that you
can see it and you can feel the bones right here and scrape it until the bones is exposed see that
so once the bones are sort of exposed and then you're just going to take your fingers and pull
it off and it broke so I've got two pieces now kind of loosen the meat that's sort of holding
on to the bones around this part come on there we go so that goes also into the stockpot and now we
can move on so our stock has been simmering for about twenty minutes or so just to get basically
to render a base stocks or chicken has a flavorful liquid to cook in and I'm going to season this
stock now this cooking liquid about a tablespoon two tablespoon and a half again you don't want
this to be too salty because this is the stock we're going to use to cook our rice in as well
and I'm going to add some cold water to bring the temperature down so he's not shocked when he goes
in to the hot water Oh at this point you can also taste the water it's going to add a little more
salt unless you do it now you want to start the cooking water not hot because if you start them
in hot water the outside will cook a lot faster than the inside so if you start it cold and bring
the temperature up together the chicken will cook more evenly throughout and then I'm going to top
him off a little so he's nicely submerged so we're going to bring the water temperature up to 165 to
170 degrees and keep it there so a thermometer like this I think this is a lot a thermometer I
found no idea where I got that from just to help you gauge the water temperature if you don't have
a thermometer you want to look for the water to be completely still so there should be no bubbling
no nothing but this there's steam coming off the top all the time that's what 160 570 degree water
looks like so without a thermometer you could still do this in Thailand that's what they do
is they call it boil chicken in Stillwater so that's what that means the temperature we need
the chicken eventually to be at is 165 degrees so if we keep the water there we make sure the
chicken does not overcook does not dry out any more than it absolutely has to we're going to come
and flip this chicken halfway through so for this guy he's going to take about 30 minutes because
he's a small chicken and the time starts after the water has reset temperature so don't start timing
until you're at 165 and then if you're doing a bigger chicken you'll probably need 45 maybe 50
minutes just depends on a lot of factors so we're going to come back what do you think we're going
to get our rice started by remember a lovely chicken fat that we collected well here it is
and we're going to render a fat you want to turn the heat down low because you don't want this skin
and everything to start burning and sticking to the bottom and you want to keep stirring because
otherwise the skin will stick to the bottom if you don't have enough chicken fat your chickens very
lean or you just don't feel good eating a lot of chicken fat you can use either all vegetable
oil or a combination of both a lot of times if I get a chicken that doesn't have a lot of fat
I just add a little vegetable oil in there just to get it to where I need so our chicken fat is
starting to collect now you can see if you've got a particularly abundant fatty chicken you
can stop whenever you've got about I'd say if you have about two to three tablespoons of fat
that should be enough for 2 cups of rice which I'm going to make you can also fry these all
the way to crispy and snack on it if you want and to this I'm going to add chopped garlic and just
until the garlic is nice and golden mmm garlicky chicken fat the smallest bits are starting to turn
golden brown I'm going to add my rice which I have rinsed twice and drained very very well
awesome and then I'm just going to coat the rice in this garlicky fatty goodness now
normally you would wait for your chicken to be done before you start doing this because
you need the chicken cooking water to cook the rice but I've got chicken cooking water from
my previous batch and then I'm going to go in with my stock two and two-thirds cup of stock
so that's one and one-third parts stock to one part rice you may need more or less depending
on your particular rice or how soft or firm you like your rice to be I've done it up to
three cups of water to two cups of rice and that yields very soft nice soft rice but you
can always add you see you can take away so if you're not sure start with less and you
can always add more we're going to stir it until the rice is thick now you're wondering
why why can I just throw all this in a rice cooker and you could and people do but you
see all this fat that is floated to the top if I let this rice cook right now like I normally
do with the rice cooker all the fat will end up coating all the rice on the top and then
there it won't be evenly distributed so I like to stir it until the rice is thick enough that
the fat can be held down by the thickness of the rice you see what I mean when we get there
there's my chicken timer so that means I have to flip my chicken but I'll deal with that in
a second because our rice is at its critical moment okay see how now it's kind of thick
pudding ish that's what we want that's what we're looking for are going to keep stirring
until there see how now the fat is staying down because the rice is thick enough to
hold it down so give it a good stir distribute that fat and now turn it down to very very low
close it up and now scrape that off and now you're just going to let it cook like you
would regular rice so let it go for about 10 to 15 minutes until all the liquid has
been absorbed then the rice looks done on the top and then turn it off and we're going to let
it sit and sort of steam in its own heat for another 10 minutes or so before research and
now the most important part the dipping sauce you can actually find common Chi in a few different
Asian countries but each country seems to have their own unique dipping sauce so of course I'm
going to show you the ones that are common in Thailand but I actually show you two the first
one is the one that you commonly find at most Calvin gai places so here are your ingredients
and now you can do this either in a blender or in a mortar and pestle ginger and garlic
first sorry ginger and what are those red things called Chili's that's right get it
to about that consistency - so there are no more big chunks it doesn't have to be
a complete mush and then you're going to go in with fermented soybean paste which I
used before in my Ratna video and it comes in a bottle like this okay and it usually is kind of
chunky still has whole soybeans in it so we're going to just crush it but now that you've got
liquid in there you don't want to pound it or you'll get it in your face you're going
to add some sugar and at this point to help it grind now every restaurant will have their own
version of this dipping sauce but the must-have ingredients for any place is the 3000 and the
next thing I'm going to add which is Cu them or black soy sauce okay see you demand and 3000
are the two main ingredients you must have and then you know everything else is sort of their
own thing so see oh damn black soy sauce comes in a bottle like this it's not very salty it's
mostly sweet if you need help finding it let me know regular soy sauce finally a little bit of
vinegar I'm just using a teaspoon if you want a little tartar you can add more give it a taste
perfect mainly salty now some people do garlic instead of ginger quite prominently sweet but
the salty is still the leading flavor recipe number two it's the one that my grandmother
always makes and it's what she tells me it's the traditional Hainanese dipping
sauce it's little brighter and lighter and more citrusy so here's what you meat
and this dipping sauce you just pound everything together
really bright and garlicky and gingery and spicy mmm so good that'll be good on anything so our
chicken is should be done it's been 30 minutes so we're going to check temperature at around this
part here and by the way don't allow for residual cooking for this guy because we're cooking the
chicken at such a low temperature as as soon as you take the chicken out the temperature will
drop right away so a we're at some 165 that's good benefit of using a small chicken is you
can take him out pretty easily and now we're going to let this sit until it's cooled down to
basically room temperature this thing is served at room temperature normally at this point you then
take the stock and cook your rice with it so and then while the rice cooks chicken could cool down
it all works out really well this stock also you want to serve as a soup on the side so you want to
taste the stock at this point it should be mildly salted it shouldn't be salty because it's going to
serve as a palate cleanser between the salty fatty bites so some people like to add some winter melon
or other vegetables to it I like it to keep it this sort of plain so there let's let this cool
down and then we're going to butcher him next just carve the chicken like you normally would if you
want to see how I do it you can click the link in the description or in the end ok so now is where
the cleaver comes in handy because then you're able to cut the chicken quickly and you won't
mess up the skin use none of this sawing stuff and it's also fun so you just go and in Thailand they
like to Pat it down so it's flat and makes it look like there's more chicken than there really is but
you don't need to do that so take that put it on your rice by the way your rice if halfway if by
the end it's cooking and the top part still a little bit hard you can drizzle a little more
stock and let keep it cooking a little bit more don't need to stir it up or anything okay so let's
and now you can serve the sauce on the side or you can drizzle it on like I
like to do and I like to double sauce it because this is sweet and salty and
the other one is sour and gingery so it kind of goes together really well
most places will not by the way have two different sauces for you let's taste it
that is really good that's better than some of the streets for the common guy I've had
the chicken is super tender because we cook it at such a low temperature that it really
didn't have any opportunity to dry out so it's perfect I didn't even brine this one
so you can imagine how tender brined chicken will be in the sauce a combination of the two
a perfect combination of spicy sweet sour salty that's all it's all very good so if
you want to try you can visit my website for the recipe at ign.com if you enjoy the
show please to subscribe and I will see you next time for your next delicious Thai meal