Rice Cooker Shaoxing Chicken
This is a very simple dish with only few ingredients simmered in an electric rice cooker for 45 minutes.
I told Keef that I needed a guinea pig for my new recipe and he said,”Come over. We’ll have lunch at Parkway and do the groceries needed for dinner.”
I showered, packed my laptop and all my necessary barang barang and was soon on my way…
The first thing you see upon entering Keef’s house is this beautiful length of aquarium filled with different fishes.
There are different species of fish, terrapins, lobsters and a gigantic scavenger fish which had grown about 10 times it’s size since I last visited Keef.
Besides the fish tank, one cannot help but be in awe of the view from Keef’s apartment in Amber Road.
Keef’s living room overlooking a sea of trees and the the actual sea view beyond.
This is where I will be doing my cooking. Right in the foreground are the knives. You will also see a lot of Elephant trinkets and whatnots lying around Keef’s home – he is crazy over elephants!
We got hungry and it’s time to go to Parkway Parade where we will do some groceries shopping, after lunch at the food court, for my recipe experimentation tonight.
We scouted around and were mesmerized by the vast displays the vendors had. There are many exotic cuisines – Thai, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Local Delights and in the end we settled for Guan Chee Hong Kong Roasts.
Laddled onto the plain rice was the braising broth made into gravy by adding starch to thickened it.
Keef ordered crispy skin pork belly, roast duck and Chinese sausage to go with our rice.
Yumz is the word!
I was glad they gave us some soup – the clear broth was full of flavour.
Our shopping list was short. Chicken, Shaoxing Wine, Shallots and Spring Onions. Keef assured me he has rest of the ingredients I needed at home.
Heaps of spring onions and shallots are the supporting ingredients in this dish that I planned to cook.
The seasonings: Salt and Shaoxing Wine (sweet yellow wine). I scrubbed the chicken with some salt to rid the slime and smell and patted it dry. Next I rubbed almost 1 tablespoon of salt to season the chicken and stuffed some shallots and spring onions into the cavity and folded the fowl’s legs back in to hold the stuffing. Cook immediately or let it season for an hour, doesn’t matter but make sure chicken is at room temperature when cooking begins.
We had bought some kueh kuehs (spelled as kueh in Singapore, Kue in Indonesian and kuih in Malaysian – local patisserie) before coming back and now that dinner preparations were done, we had time for tea or rather coffee with Keef’s Krups Fire Red Engine 🙂
The fried dough in front, what we call “Fried Butterfly” is packed with sesame seeds and has no fillings inside. The round flat dough below the butterfly dough is Ham Chin Peng and I had chose the one with red bean filling.
Here we have the Malay kueh Bakar Manis in front and Ondeh Ondeh balls filled with palm sugar syrup and rolled in dessicated coconut.
Not a relative of Jennifer Lopez, Kueh Lopes is Steamed Glutinous Rice dredged in coconut shavings served with Palm Sugar Syrup.
Keef playing with his food again! He thought it was funny to put the You Char Kway in between the two Ondeh Ondeh.
Keef had taken out all the Nespresso capsules from the boxes so we did not know what blends we were drinking.
Coffee is my favourite beverage and if I’d missed my cup, I’ll get a bad headache… caffeine withdrawal? I just like the aroma but I am not a connoisseur of coffea and forget about the roast names… any cuppa will do when I’m an addict.
Time to resume cooking. The chicken needed 45 minutes after which I will also do a vegetable stir-fry. The name of the vegetable Keef chose is quite funny. We call it Nai Pak Choy in dialect but it is known as Extra Dwarf Pak Choy when I searched online, hehe…
The chicken was already prepped earlier so I only need to pour in the Shaoxing Wine. We bought Hua Tiao Chiew brand and since we will be drinking the wine later, I suggest buying the premium grade for this or any brand, that is if you believe in putting reasonable good things into your body.
Put the chicken breast side down into a rice cooker and pour in the wine – our rice cooker has 1.4 litres capacity and the chicken was about a Large, duh… The supermarket shelf did gave the weight information and I have forgotten the range given. I can safely say this is about 1kg.
Turn on the cooking function and time 30 minutes. Flip the chicken over with a pair of chopsticks or anything you’re comfortable with and time another 15 minutes. Try not to break the skin too much. Chicken is done when juices from the thickest part runs clear when pricked with a chopstick all the way in.
Meantime, mince finely the Spring Onions and Old Ginger. Click here for recipe.
Take out the chicken from the pot and drain the juice and wine into a bowl. Remove the spring onions onto the serving plate if you intend to eat them.
Let the chicken rest and cool before cutting, about 15 minutes. During this time, I put in the soaked raw rice into the pot (the pot is not washed from cooking the chicken earlier – adds a little flavour and saves water too, let’s go green whenever we can) and turn on cook function. I also heat up some oil and deep-fry the garlic cloves for the vegetable stir-fry later. After removing the garlic cloves, I pour the boiling oil into the dipping sauce (not before reserving about ¾ tablespoon for stir-frying the vegetables) .
After the rice is cooked do I cut the chicken. Keeping the cooked rice in the pot for a few more minutes allow the Jasmine fragrance to infuse back into the rice.
The chicken was so tender I did not need a heavy duty cleaver. Assemble the cut chicken pieces on top of the bed of spring onions. Drizzle a tablespoon or two of the wine broth over the chicken (I scoop the top part of the broth where the oil floated so as to glisten and protect the chicken from drying out while I cook the vegetables).
Stir-fry Baby or Dwarf Nai Pak Choy. Click here for recipe.
All we need now is chopsticks and rice!
I was quite eager to taste and see if the chicken turn out well. We took sips of the wine broth which was a little salty (from the chicken marinade) and sweet (from the wine). It was quite pleasing. Keef has gone into the kitchen to get his belachan chillie which was not pictured. It was spicy hot and goes well with the chicken although I much prefer to dip the chicken back into the wine broth and eat with the ginger dip. Overall, Keef liked it and gave this dish a 7.5 out of 10. That’s very generous of him!
While having more coffee after dinner, I noticed a brown mass on top of Keef’s bamboo plants. “Is that a bird’s nest?”… “Ya, it is… some birds came, made nest, babies were hatched and I took pictures of them. The parent birds were squawking furiously at the side when I did that. They flew away and never returned. The nest has been abandoned ever since.” That was sad 😦 I felt slightly thirsty afterwards… there was no msg in my food (lunch?), perhaps it was the salt or simply the fact I did not drink enough water that day. An ice cold apple cider came to the rescue 🙂
Shaoxing Chicken Recipe
Ingredients:
1kg Whole Chicken.
¾ – 1 tablespoon Salt.
500g Spring Onions, cleaned and kept whole (reserve some for dipping sauce).
8 Shallots, sliced.
500ml Hua Tiao Shaoxing Chiew.
Method:
Turn on rice cooker and cook for 45 minutes: breast side down for 30 minutes and turn chicken over on back and cook for 15 minutes.
Remove chicken from pot and drain away excess liquid. Cut chicken into pieces when cool enough to handle.
Serve the wine broth as soup during dinner, it’s potent stuff!
Note: I kept some of it (soaked in the broth) in the fridge and ate it cold the next day. Still tender but the wine has “gelatinised” like soft jello, quite nice.
Happy eating 🙂
If you are looking for a homestay in Singapore, try Keef’s airbnb here.
The Bonding Tool 
Fantastic recipe! Reminds me of one where my mom cooks turkey with onions. 🙂
I can imagine… Mother’s cooking is always the best 😀