Cuisine
Singaporean hawker cooking — chicken rice, chilli crab, laksa — where consistency and stock quality separate the good from the great.
Singaporean hawker cooking — chicken rice, chilli crab, laksa — where consistency and stock quality separate the good from the great.
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Questions from the pass
Poach whole chickens at a bare simmer between 80°C and 85°C for 45 to 50 minutes. Immediately plunge the birds into an ice bath for 20 minutes. This gelatinises the skin and locks in moisture. Use the fat skimmed from the poaching broth to cook the rice with pandan, garlic, and ginger.
A proper laksa broth relies on a high-gelatin chicken and pork bone stock boiled for at least four hours. Sweat a rempah paste of dried chillies, lemongrass, galangal, and shrimp paste (belacan) in oil until the fat separates. Whisk in the stock and coconut milk at a 3:1 ratio, simmering gently to prevent curdling.
Thicken the sauce using a cornflour slurry of one tablespoon of cornflour to two tablespoons of water, added over medium heat just before finishing. Once the sauce coats the back of a spoon, turn off the heat and slowly whisk in a beaten egg. The residual heat creates silkiness rather than heavy clumps.
Use aged long-grain jasmine rice. Wash and dry the grains thoroughly, then fry them in chicken fat, garlic, and ginger before boiling. Use a 1:1.2 rice-to-chicken-stock ratio by volume. Cook in a rice cooker or covered pot, then let it steam undisturbed for 15 minutes before fluffing with a fork.
Mix light soy sauce, poaching broth, sesame oil, and a pinch of sugar in a 4:4:1 ratio. Warm the mixture through to dissolve the sugar, then ladle it directly over the carved chicken just before serving. This seasons the meat and keeps it glistening on the pass without masking the natural chicken flavour.
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