juicy and moist and fatty and delicious
this is what real chicken tastes like
hey I'm Nikki and today I'm making my
family's recipe of Hainanese chicken
rice
the first thing you want to do when
making chicken rice is take care of your
chicken we salt the heck out of it and
you give it a good rubdown
it's like a little exfoliating massage
this cleans the chicken skin makes it
nice and plump when it cooks so now you
can trim off some of the chicken fat and
you want to save it for a super
important step later and go ahead and
season it again with more salt don't
forget to season the inside the cavity
it shoves some ginger in there some
green onion so that when it cooks you
get that beautiful flavor from the
inside out Hainanese chicken rice is
like a beautifully boiled whole chicken
that is juicy and moist and fatty and
delicious served with rice and a array
of sauces I was born and raised in
Singapore and this dish has always been
a part of my life chicken rice is like a
staple home-cooked food or street food
that all Singaporeans know about you can
get them at Hawker centers you can make
them at home my grandma made it for us
when we moved to the states and couldn't
get it anymore
I recently got married and I got to
introduce my wife to chicken rice I was
really special this is an ethnically
Chinese dish but because Singapore is
such a melting pot of cultures and
people from all over Asia it's kind of
become this staple of Singaporean street
food the dish is traditionally cooked
with this chicken found mostly in Asia
that has like a very yellow fat to it
the skin actually comes out more yellow
than I think we're used to seeing here
in the US and it's all about tasting
what that chicken is in its purest form
and so it's not quite what we have here
but it's pretty darn close and it's
amazing it's great
oh man that ginger garlic smells so good
in that sesame oil get all of those
flavors really incorporated into all of
that rice and then you dump it right
into a rice cooker just like my grandma
did grandma's always using a rice cooker
she really likes using this even if she
doesn't have to I think one of the big
reasons why Asian American
representation is so important is
because there are a lot of
misconceptions about what it means
to be asian-american or to be Asian I
myself I'm an Asian immigrant and
sometimes people have a lot of
preconceived notions of what that means
Singapore is such a beautiful and
vibrant and collaborative culture and I
think a lot of people don't really know
a lot about it for me growing up it was
always a lot of family friends cousins
aunts uncles grandpas coming together
and everyone kind of bringing their own
food and sharing and just having a great
time
sweating it out there because it is hot
in Singapore I can kind of look back and
reflect on how formative my early
childhood years were to Who I am now and
how that has affected my worldview and
it's something that I want to share with
people and if I can do that through a
plate of really delicious food then I
can't think of anything better
my dad always joked that like we may be
American kids now but we have Chinese
stomachs and he's totally right and when
I have a plate of chicken rice I could
feel at home for just a few minutes and
I love it oh yeah oh yes
you
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