A Bite of China: Poached Chicken

Finally I have found the time to officially launch this project! Starting is the hardest time.  Since I don’t live in an Asian city, some times the ingredients are a bit harder to find.  However, its never too hard to get some chicken into our meal. I love chicken and so its the best way to start off this project.

This was part of my meal in celebration of Chinese New Year: Poached Chicken.  Either later tonight or tomorrow, I’ll be posting up my second part of my meal.

Forgive me though, the beginner chopping chicken into pieces…was really tough.  Anyone has any tricks..please enlighten me.

Here’s how it turned out:

If you want the recipe, I’ll give you an idea of what it is.  Chinese recipes have a certain obscurity to it…which is why I never really want to post them up or even follow them.  Because ask a housewife (say my mom) how she cooks, she’ll tell you its a general feeling, no quantity to it.

Ingredients:

1 whole Chicken

3 stems Green onions

4 slices Ginger

Sesame oil

1/2 spoon (table or tea, you decide..I used teaspoon) Salt

1 spoon soy sauce (yet again I assumed teaspoon)

How to make it:

1. In a big deep wok, fill it with water and put in the green onions and ginger.  Set it on high heat till it boils.

2. Put the chicken into the wok in the boiling water and let it cook for about 5 minutes.  After set it to low-medium heat and let it simmer for around 20 minutes.  It will be ready when you put a chopstick (or other utensil) into the chicken thigh and there is no blood.  When the chicken is ready, take it out out of the water and transfer to a plate.

3. Cover the chicken with sesame oil.  Let it cool and then cut it into small pieces.  Afterwards, mince the ginger and onions and put it into a separate small bowl.

4. Heat up a bit of oil and pour it over the minced ginger and onions and add salt and soy sauce.  Finally, add in a teaspoon of the chicken broth (from the wok) and add a bit of sesame oil.

If anything doesn’t make sense, just ask me.  I’m translating this from my Chinese cookbook.  Its a relatively straightforward recipe.  My old stove decided to go crazy and not work halfway through cooking it, so my time on the 20 mins is not exactly certain. It might have taken me a bit longer.  I also think I didn’t add enough onions and that would help with the taste absorbed in the chicken.

However, the verdict was good. You have to have it with the sauce for it to taste good because by itself, it is a very plain chicken with hints of onion and ginger and sesame oil.  The sauce brings out the essence of it.

Here it is! The first recipe from A Bite of China Project.  Yet again, if you haven’t checked out the page, you can find it on the bar on the top or I have linked back to it.  I know that for me to do this by myself could be challenging and if any of you are interested, just drop me an email with what you’d like to try and I’ll send over the recipe to you.  An official guest contributor here on my little blog! It will be fun. If you have any suggestions, please do tell me in the comments or whatnot.  I’m still working on how to make this project into a great experience for everyone as much as its a journey to learn more about Chinese cuisine.