A huge favorite in Chinese restaurants all over the world, soy chicken, also known as soya chicken or soy sauce chicken, is chicken cooked in soy sauce. Well, a little more than soy sauce, actually. But it’s really easy to make. The only hard part is waiting for it to cool so that the bird can be sliced through the bones without the meat falling apart.
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken - about 1 kg.
- 2 star anise
- 1 cinnamon bark
- 4 cloves garlic - crushed and peeled
- 2 knobs ginger - peeled and sliced
- 2 shallots - peeled
- 6 peppercorns
- 1 and 1/4 cups dark soy sauce
- 1/2 cups light soy sauce
- splash black vinegar
- 2 generous splashes rice wine
- 4 tablespoons sugar
Instructions
- Butterfly the chicken.
- Pour the soy sauces, rice wine and black vinegar into a wok. Add about four cups of water.
- Throw in the sugar, star anise, cinnamon, peppercorns, shallots, ginger and garlic.
- Bring to the boil then allow to boil uncovered for five minutes to allow the alcohol to evaporate.
- Lower the chicken into the hot liquid, skin side down. When the liquid starts to boil once more, lower the heat, cover the wok and simmer the chicken for 30 minutes, turning the chicken over after 15 minutes. DO NOT overcook.
- Turn off the heat but leave the chicken in the cooking liquid to finish cooking in the residual heat. Then leave it there until it has cooled to room temperature. One tip: after turning off the heat, turn the chicken over once more so that the skin and the thicker portions of the meat are submerged in the liquid. This will give the chicken a deeper and darker color.
- When the chicken has cooled, transfer to a chopping board. Chop — through the bones — into serving size pieces. You’ll need a very sharp cleaver to do this. If your knife is less than super sharp, the meat will fall apart while chopping even if the chicken has cooled to room temperature.
- Serve your soy chicken with ginger-scallion sauce.
Cook's Notes
To make ginger-scallion sauce, mix together equal amounts of minced ginger and scallions with just enough peanut oil to make a paste. Season with salt to taste.
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