My weekly food column in Hong Kong Economic Journal couple of weeks ago : Uncle Ding’s Hainanese Chicken Rice
Uncle Ding, the renowned cooking show chef, he handles chicken differently when producing its “authentic Hainanese chicken rice”. Using fresh chicken is a must. A commonly practiced method is to soak the poached chicken in iced water, almost like the traditional Finnish sauna where you’d go for a dip in an ice pool after your sauna. Uncle Ding. he told me the pros and cons of this step: the pro, the meat is silkily smooth, a layer of “chicken jelly” is formed in between the skin and the meat, it looks tantalizing.
However, chicken flavour is significantly lost, resulting in the biggest downfall of this method. In addition to that, when chopped, the skin inevitably separates from the meat. I was enlightened, that’s why whenever I eat Hainanese chicken rice, the skin and the meat are always fallen apart.
In order to retain maximum chicken flavour, Uncle Ding never soaks poached chicken in iced water. Instead, he air-dries them hanging up. Uncle Ding said this step takes more than an hour, even longer during summer when the air humidity is high. Sometimes he would fan the chicken with an electric fan.
鼎爺的「正宗海南雞飯」，雞隻處理跟別人有所不同。講究食材的話，用上新鮮雞是一定的，坊間大部分的做法，是把雞隻浸熟之後，再放入冰水裡面「過冷河」，鼎爺說此步驟有得也有有失——好處是「過冷河」後，雞肉得出又嫩又滑的效果，而且雞皮和雞肉之間會形成一層「雞jelly」，賣相誘人。然而，這個步驟的最大敗筆是，雞味會流失，肉味濃度因此降低不少。另外，浸過冰水的雞隻，斬雞後會難免皮肉分離——鼎爺這麼一說，我恍然大悟，難怪每一次吃海南雞飯，那雞皮都無法跟雞肉緊緊依附在一塊。
鼎爺說，為了保留最大的雞味，他做海南雞從不浸冰水過冷河，而是會把浸熟後的雞隻吊起來自然風乾，這步驟需時大約一個多小時，遇上夏天的潮濕天氣可能需要更長，或者可以用風扇去吹乾。
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