Chicken Dish for Chinese New Year

Chicken dish is in the not-to-be-missed dish in Chinese New Year food especially during Chinese New Year reunion dinner.  Traditionally, this chicken dish will use a whole chicken including head and claws – cooked and offered to “god” before being cut to smaller pieces to be eaten.  This Chinese New Year chicken dish taste so good you must have thought the recipe is somewhat complicated.  Wrong!  This chicken dish is very easy!

Looking at this chicken dish recipe, ingredients needed are basically just a kampong chicken, salt and water!  The kampong chicken will be boiled in a pot of water (yes, just plain water) and hauled up when cooked.  When it cooled down, coat it with salt.  If you’re using this chicken dish as offerings, go ahead.  If not, wait for about 15 minutes before you cut it to smaller portions to be eaten.  So that the chicken would have absorbed a bit of the salty taste.  It is normal to serve the chicken dish cold.

What’s better still, the pot of water used to boil the chicken can be kept in freezer whole year long to be used as if chicken stock.  Use it for your noodle dishes or soup (in replacement of plain water).  It is almost tasteless but with the essence and fragrance of chicken!  Pack it into few small portions with containers or waterproof packets for use at different occasion.

The only thing concerned in preparation would be equipment.  You need to have a pot big enough for whole chicken and figure out how you’re going to haul up the whole chicken later without poking too many holes on it!  Lol!  Don’t worry, its easy if you have a large thong.  I sometimes use hands (in gloves and when it cooled down) but also seen people hauling it up with just chopsticks, one poked into the chicken’s neck part and another in the buttock.  If you’re not going to serve it as offerings, go ahead and buy cut chicken.  You’ll have no problem with equipment.

I’ve almost got the whole chicken recipe revealed already but let’s look in detail:-

Chicken Dish for Chinese New Year

Ingredients:

• 1 pot of water (enough to submerge the whole chicken + 3 inches more in height to prepare for evaporation)
• 1 whole kampong chicken (cleaned)
• 2 tbsp of salt (coarse salt preferably but fine salt will be ok too)

Preparation:

1. Boil the water and plunge in the chicken.
2. Keep boiling until cooked (about 20 minutes, test it by poking a knife into the flesh – flesh should be softer when cooked.  If you’re not sure, note that Chinese food is rather overcooked than undercooked)
3. Haul up the chicken.
4. Set aside to let cool.  Then coat the outside of the chicken with your hands.  Leave it for another 15 minutes.
5. Ready to serve.

Let’s look at some food cutting terms usually found on food recipes:-

Chop
Cut food into extremely tiny pieces using knife and chopping board or food processor.

Crush
Flatten food usually by using heavy item such as stone mortar and pestle (batu lesung) or just knife.

Cube
Cut food into square-like pieces measuring about an inch (eg. beef is cubed for rendang dish).

Dice
Cut food into small square-like pieces (smaller than cubed, more or less the size of corn kernels).

Halve
Cut food into half.

Julienne
Cut food into thin, matchstick-like strips.

Mince
Similar to “chop” but finer. Cut food using knife and chopping board or using food processor as well. When buying meat items from supermarket, you can request them minced. They have meat mincer to do it and save you the hassle.

Slice
Cut food into thin, flat pieces.

Wedge
Cut food (usually round food eg. tomato, potato, apple, orange) into wedge-like pieces usually by halving the food from top to bottom, then halving the halved pieces the same way.

With nowadays’ technology, food can be cut into various shapes using cutting machines and cutting equipment (other than knife) such as slicer, food processor/ blender, meat mincer, core remover etc. These are created to replace hassle tasks but I still think manual cutting with knives and cutting boards is still more suitable to cater a family’s dining needs than machines. All you need are sharp knives, cutting board and skillful hands! Furthermore, artistic cuttings (such as carving for garnish) still very much require manual touch.

How to brush up your skill with knife? In any skill, practice makes perfect. Watch and observe how others do it and learn from the experts. Practice gradually and the skill will soon develop! A tip for you – use sawing motion when cutting food gives clean cut without damaging the shape of the food too much.

Note that while it seems safer to use blunt knife to practice, injuries are often caused by blunt knife. So use sharp knife instead. You can get clean cut of any food – just be more careful. Happy “cutting”!

Remember to adjust quantity of ingredients according to number of servings too. If a food recipe is meant for 10 pax (10 servings) but you will serve food only for 5 pax, divide ingredients to half. Eg. 1000g of flour to bake a cake for 10 pax are cut down to 500g for 5 pax.

Now let’s first understand some simple ingredients measurement used in food recipes:

Quantity measurement:

tsp = teaspoon
tbsp = tablespoon
to taste = sprinkle (taste the food and sprinkle more if necessary)

Weight measurement:
gm or g = gram
kgm or kg = kilogram (=1000g)

Liquid measurement:

ml = milliliter
l = liter (=1000 ml)
(note: 1000ml of water is about 1000g of water)

Take note of tablespoon and dessert spoon in the photo. In our country, spoons we often use at home (and even most restaurants) for our main course are usually dessert spoon. Tablespoon is slightly larger.

Even without proper measuring scale, accurate liquid measurement is still possible with a simple measurement method. Use empty mineral water bottles for liquid measurement. Please make sure they are clean. A small bottle is usually 500ml. To get smaller scales (eg. 100ml), you can do marking on a bottle. The picture here shows markings on a big bottle. Every marking at 500ml is obtained by emptying water from a 500ml bottle gradually into this bottle.

A tip for measuring water content when cooking soup: cover ingredients with water double the height of ingredients in pot (see diagram).

Weight measurement is harder to be accurate without proper measuring equipment. However, it can be estimated. For example flour that came in a packet of 500g. Pour out half and you’ll get 250g. This method is not advisable for preparation of pastry food such as cakes and breads where accurate ingredients measurement is extremely important. There is no need to risk ruining the food. Small kitchen weighing scale is affordably available at most hypermarkets