Working Mother's Hainanese Chicken Rice

Tuesday evening :
Daughter: 'What are you cooking for dinner tomorrow, Mum? A------- is coming over' (That's her boyfriend).
Working Mother: 'I dunno. What you want to eat? Chicken rice?'
Daughter: 'Yes! OK, chicken rice!'

Late Tuesday night :
Barges into our room. Double confirmation.
Daughter: 'So, chicken rice, ah?'

Both in unison
Husband: 'OK! Chicken rice' / Working Mother: 'Or sui kow?'
Daughter: 'Chicken rice!'

Husband looks at me: 'Just say Chicken Rice, lah. She wants Chicken Rice, just say OK, lor.'
Working Mother: 'Ok, ok....(sigh)'

Wednesday morning triple confirmation.
Texted message from Daughter:
'So what are you cooking tonight for dinner, Mum?'

Working Mother's No Frills Hainanese Chicken Rice

We eat a lot of chicken at home. Fillet for hubs and the kids. Boney chicken for me. So to prepare a chicken dish, I always have to have both types of cuts at home. To sidetrack a bit, I'm finding it harder and harder to find chicken fillet at the supermarkets and when I can find them, they're usually thawed from frozen fillet but charged like fresh chicken fillet. What a rip off.

Anyway, decided to cook two types of chicken. One, cut up fillet into bits, dip in flour and fry. Not exactly Hainanese Chicken Rice but hey, anything to keep my family happy.

Fillet bits seasoned and fried by Hubby

Actually, the first thing I always do is to cook the rice. I would have had enough soup and oily bits from my chicken parts to do the rice from scratch. But when you have hungry teens in the wings waiting, store bought chicken rice sauce goes a long way. Have tried a few brands and Loy Chng Kee's (forgot the brand but I think it has Kee in it) works best for me. Costs more than the packet ones too. Dumped the whole bottle in although I think the instructions said 4 tbsp for 4 container scoops of rice. I was cooking 5 scoops of rice and by the time I had scooped out my 4th tbsp of sauce, I noticed not much left in the bottle - so just dumped all of its contents into the rice pot, added water, a few cloves of garlic (unpeeled) and stirred thoroughly.

While the rice was cooking, I got the chicken boiling. Chucked some breast meat (with bones) and wingsticks (not chicken wings but little drummettes - Alamak, how to spell drummette?) which I always refer to as small drumsticks, into a pot. Brought it to a furious boil for about 10 minutes, then turned off the stove, covered the pot and let it sit for half an hour in the hot soup.

Meanwhile, I had the fillet bits seasoned and deep fried by hubby (yes, he's getting the hang of cooking - in fact, he fries better than me). 

The boiled chicken was cooked just nice. Not too hard, not too soft and cooked! No pink flesh! That is a big deal to me, considering I worry alot about undercooking chicken all the time. I drained them and dunked them in cold water. Cut up the breast pieces into half, then drizzled a mix of soya sauce and sesame oil over them. Sliced some lettuce into the soup and served.

Voila!

Self-rating: 6/10
Chicken turned out nice. Not too hard, not too soft but definitely have not reached the level of chicken succulence which I can find at some chicken rice stores!
Rice at bottom of pot turned out a bit burnt. Not sure why. Maybe I hadn't stirred the sauce enough. Fortunately, I had cooked 5 scoops of rice so there was plenty on the top to eat.
Wah piang, plenty of cleaning up after that. Would have been much cheaper and easier to go buy chicken rice. But that would have lacked the love hubs and I put into preparing this dish to feed our family.
(Hubby said above pic of white chicken looks like 'sotong' to him. What the heck!?)