Haianese Chicken Rice

A very popular dish in Singapore and Malaysia.
The guys from SortedFood made it on YT and it stuck to my brain for a while now.

Yesterday I bought a 2 kilo free range chicken and the first thought was Haianese Chicken Rice when I put it in my grocery basket. I went back to the veggie isle and bought the other stuff needed to the recipe. I changed a few things in the recipe.

It is a wonderful dish, but not so easy to prepare. It has a lot of steps and it takes a lot of time. I started at 9 AM on a Sunday and plated the food around noon. And you have a lot of mess and dishes on your hands later. But the up side is, you have about 2 liters of premium chicken stock left and some chicken meat for other dishes.

First you have to give the chicken a massage with salt to exfoliate the skin. Place it in a bowl and rub it down, then wash away the salt. You are looking for silky smooth skin in this dish and believe me, it gets that way.
Keep the bowl at hand for the ice bath after you cooked the chicken.

recipe:
1 large free range chicken
half a hand full of salt

1 leek
1 large onion
1 bunch of spring onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 pieces of gin
stalks of 1 bunch of coriander
pepper
2 button mushrooms

2 cups Thain rice
1 tbsp duck fat
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 pieces of ginger
3 cloves of garlic

50 ml soy sauce
50 ml water
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp sweet chili sauce

fresh mungo bean sprouts
1 tomato per person
coriander leaves

Peel and clean all the veggies and cut them roughly.
Set the chicken in a big pot with all the veg and add pepper and bay leaves.
Bring to a boil and after 10 min skim off the foam. On low heat let it cook for 50 min.
Fill the bowl with cold water and fill ice cubes or a freezer block into the water. Dump the chicken in strait from the pot. Let it cool down to room temperature.

Bring the soup back to a strong boil and reduce it for 30 minutes. After that you can salt the soup to your taste.

Let down the soy sauce with water and sugar in a pan, heat it up and set aside for later.
The bean sprouts need to be in boiling water for 30 seconds.
Use a small blender and put a little rapeseed oil with ginger and garlic in and make a paste.
Soak the washed rice for 15 min.

In a pot with a lid, start the paste and add the duck or chicken fat. Put the rice in and let it get coated all around. Add 4 cups of chicken soup and reduce the heat and let it sit for 10 min.

Be careful when you lift  the chicken out of the ice bath, do not destroy the lovely skin too much.
Cut it into pieces and let them sit on the rice bed. Drizzle with sauce and a bit of soup.
Serve with the bean sprouts and a tomato and coriander greens.