Soy Sauce Chicken (豉油雞)

// SUPPLY LIST

// OPERATIONS

1. 1 Take the chicken out of the fridge a full 60 minutes before you plan to cook and sit it uncovered on a rack at room temperature — a fridge-cold bird is the single commonest cause of a raw thigh joint sitting next to an overcooked breast, and no amount of extra time in the pot fixes that unevenness. Rub the teaspoon of salt around the inside of the cavity only, never the skin, which is going into a stock salty enough as it is, then pat the outside completely dry with kitchen paper so the first dip sets the skin instead of steaming it. Do not rinse the bird under the tap: it does nothing the hot stock will not do, and it sprays raw juices around the sink.
2. 2 Choose a deep, heavy-based stockpot, tall rather than wide — about 22 cm across and at least 8 litres — because the narrower the pot the less soy sauce it takes to cover the bird; in a 28 cm pot you will need half again as much. Combine the water, light soy, dark soy, Shaoxing, rock sugar, ginger slices and spring onion knots in it and bring to a gentle boil over medium-high heat, stirring once or twice until every shard of rock sugar has dissolved and nothing rattles on the base when you stir.
3. 3 Bundle the star anise, cassia, tangerine peel, liquorice, sand ginger, tsaoko and cloves into a square of muslin, tie it shut, drop it in, then turn the heat to low and simmer partially covered for 25 minutes, until the stock is near-black and glossy and the kitchen smells strongly of anise and cassia. Use the bag rather than loose spices — the counters use a 香料包 for a reason, and it lets you lift the spices out once they have given everything they have — and keep the lid ajar rather than off, because an uncovered 25-minute simmer boils away 300–400 ml and you will find the bird no longer covered.
4. 4 Take the lid off and let the stock fall to a steady 85°C / 185°F, which takes about five minutes, then clip a probe thermometer to the side of the pot. The surface should shiver, with a few lazy bubbles creeping up the edge and nothing breaking in the middle; that shiver is the cue to work from if you have no thermometer, but buy one if you can, because this single number is the whole recipe.
5. 5 Do the three dips (三浸三提): hook the handle of a long wooden spoon through the body cavity, or grip the bird firmly with tongs, and lower it neck-first into the stock until it is completely submerged. Hold for 15 seconds, lift it clear, let the cavity drain right back into the pot, then repeat twice more — this floods the inside of the bird with hot stock so the interior starts cooking at the same moment as the exterior, and it tightens the skin so it will not split later. The cold bird pulls the stock temperature down each time, so check it has recovered to at least 80°C / 176°F before the final dip and nudge the heat up if it has not.
6. 6 Lower the chicken in breast-side down so it sits under 2–3 cm of stock, topping up with just-boiled water if any part of the back stands proud, put the lid on and hold at 80–85°C / 176–185°F for 30 minutes, turning the bird once at the halfway point with two wooden spoons. It must never boil, not once: at a rolling boil the skin tears away in sheets, the collagen contracts and squeezes the juices out and the breast turns chalky — if bubbles start breaking across the middle of the surface, pull the pot half off the burner and let it settle back down.
7. 7 Turn the heat off entirely, leave the lid on and let the bird stand in the stock for a further 30 minutes while carryover finishes it; the stock will drift down to around 70°C / 158°F over that time, which is exactly what you want. Probe the deepest part of the thigh, close to but not touching the bone: you are looking for 74°C / 165°F. If it reads low, return the pot to low heat, hold at 80°C / 176°F for 5 more minutes and test again — flesh right against the bone may stay faintly rosy and juices at the joint may run pink, which is normal and correct at a Cantonese counter, so trust the thermometer and not the colour.
8. 8 Lift the chicken out with a spider or two wooden spoons, tipping it neck-down over the pot so every drop of stock drains out of the cavity, then sit it breast-up on a rack over a tray and rest it for 15 minutes. Brush the skin twice with a little of the hot stock while it rests — that is what builds the lacquer as it cools and tightens. Skipping the rest floods the board at the first cut and leaves the meat tightening as it cools.
9. 9 While the bird rests, strain the stock through a fine sieve into a clean container, discarding the spent ginger and spring onion and lifting out the spice bag — squeeze it, use it once more at most, then throw it away, because a wet bag left sitting in the stock over-extracts and turns the lou soi bitter and medicinal. Ladle 250 ml aside for the glaze, then cool the rest fast in a wide shallow container and refrigerate within 2 hours: anything held between 5°C and 60°C / 41°F and 140°F is a bacterial incubator, and a master stock is exactly the thing that gets left on the hob overnight. Lift off the set fat next day and either freeze it or bring it back to a hard boil for 5 minutes every three or four days, topping up before each bird with light soy, water and rock sugar in the same ratio.
10. 10 Pour the reserved 250 ml of stock into a small saucepan and simmer briskly over medium-high heat for 3–4 minutes, until it has reduced to about 175 ml and leaves a clinging film on the back of a spoon, then take it off the heat and stir in the sesame oil. Do not reduce it harder or further than that — the stock is already salty enough to season a whole bird, and a heavy reduction turns acrid and over-salted rather than glossy. Do not thicken it with cornflour either: that is a shop shortcut and it leaves a gluey, translucent coat that dulls the lacquer, whereas a straight reduction of the lou soi is what makes the skin gleam.
11. 11 Chop the bird Cantonese-style on a heavy board with a cleaver: take the legs off at the hip joint and split each into drumstick and thigh, then chop each of those across the bone into two or three pieces; remove the wings; split the carcass down one side of the backbone and chop the breast crosswise into 2 cm strips, straight through the bone. Every cut is one clean, committed stroke with the weight of the cleaver behind it — hesitant sawing shatters the bone and drives splinters into the meat.
12. 12 Reassemble the pieces in the shape of the bird on a warmed oval platter, breast down the middle and legs and wings to the outside, spoon the warm glaze over so it pools slightly around the base, and scatter with coriander sprigs. Serve with jasmine rice and blanched choy sum, either straight away or at the just-warm room temperature the siu mei counters actually sell it at, which many cooks reckon tastes better. A 1.5 kg bird chopped this way is four generous portions with rice and a green vegetable.

// CLASSIFICATIONS