Growing up my mom would cook a lot of Chinese food that she grew up eating, which is mostly Northern China food. It wasn’t until I moved away to college that I became exposed to other Asian food from different countries. During my second to fourth year in university, I lived with a Taiwanese lady who lived in Indonesia for many years. She would cook a lot of different Indonesian and Singaporean food that she learned over the years.

I loved eating her food especially the spicy foods. One of my most memorable food she made was this Hainanese Chicken rice. At the time I didn’t know about Hainanese Chicken rice but this was something I always look forward to when she made it.

Classic Hainanese Chicken rice

The most classic way of making this chicken is actually boiling the chicken. Then the rice is made by using chicken fat, garlic, ginger to stir fry the rice and then cooked in chicken stock. The chicken is cut into the pieces and served with a ginger- garlic oil, chili sauce and sweet soy sauce. Hainanese Chicken rice came from recipe of Hainanese immigrants in southeast Asian. It’s adapted from Hainan dish called Wenchang Chicken. This dish has a long history. Nowadays there are many different variations of this dish in many Southeast Asian countries.

My Modified Hainanese Chicken rice

My recipe is inspired by my Taiwanese landlady. She would steam the whole chicken and since the chicken would release chicken juice, she would use that to make the rice. She would also add pandan leaves. It’s usually served with a Thai chilli lemon juice on the side with the rice.

This recipe I’m sharing has some modifications from her recipe. I still steam the chicken, shred the chicken. It’s then cooked with rice, coconut milk, chicken juice/stock and pandan leaves inside the rice cooker.

I love cooking like this because I can have this meal for multiple days after. The Thai chili and lemon juice is refreshing, tangy and spicy which helped to offset some of the richness of my chicken rice. I also added scallion and ginger oil which is also delicious. While the scallion and ginger oil is not traditionally served with Hainanese Chicken rice, I love this sauce so I decided to use it here. (Scallion ginger oil is used in Poached chicken called bai qie ji or 白切鸡).

Ingredients:

Chicken: Young chicken is best, try to use 2-3 lbs. This will give you enough to feed your family and have enough for leftovers. I used a 3lbs chicken for my husband and I. It was enough for one main meal and leftovers for us for 2 more days. That was great because it saved us from having to cook more food if we are feeling lazy.

Rice: Use short grain rice, I would prefer for them to have some stickiness rather than loose because the texture is a lot better. In addition, when you add the chicken juice and coconut water, it’s oily enough that the rice is slightly less sticky as well.

Pandan leaves: This is a trick I learned from my landlady when I saw her making this dish. They are usually found in Asian supermarkets. It’s usually sold in relatively 3-4 bunches. You only need to use 1 bunch. The other bunches you can freeze and defrost as you need. The pandan leaves can also be blended into a juice, strained and used for desserts.

Coconut milk: This was not in the original recipe that my landlady made for me. I actually started using coconut milk when I was cooking with husband during pandemic. I found adding coconut milk add a richness to the chicken rice contrast to the Thai chili lemon juice. This is completely optional but I love the flavour it gives. The canned coconut milk I use is from the grocery store (no brand in particular).

Pro-tip:

Use 2-3lb chicken, it will be enough to feed 4 people with leftovers.
If you can, use the pandan leaves, it has a very subtle flavour when infusing the rice but it’s not necessary if you can’t find it.
Remove any cloudy or scum from the chicken stock from the steamed chicken, the stock should be clear