Hey Hive!
We're back with more of our home cooking! If you're unfamiliar with this series, it's where I showcase some of the food we've been making at home since we've been cooking a lot nowadays! Both because it's cheaper and also healthier to cook for yourself compared to eating out. While I usually stick to the usual recipes I do like to try new ones once in a while and figured I'd share the new ones I've tried.
I know I said I would share these once a month but tbh I've been cooking more often now rather than going out and trying new restaurants so I figure we could do these twice a month now?
Source: expatchoice
If you didn't know, Singapore's national dish is Hainanese chicken rice. It was created by immigrants from Hainan in southern China and who adapted it from a well-known Hainanese dish called Wenchang Chicken. The dish consists of poached chicken and seasoned rice, served with chilli sauce and usually garnished with fresh cucumber slices.
The actual dish is fairly complicated and has quite a lot of steps since making the chicken and rendering the fat to cook with the rice can take a long time. But thankfully, there are different types of mixes and sauces now to skip all those steps!
I previously tried this Chicken Rice Mix from our local supermarket in-house brand but tbh it was a little disappointing and didn't taste like how chicken rice is supposed to taste. It would fine if I didn't know it was supposed to be chicken rice.
So after searching I came across this article that compared different mixes and they concluded that this brand called Singlong is the best. I was curious to see how good it really was and since it cost less than 2 bucks I thought it was worth a shot.
Here are the instructions on the back of the box.
To make the rice I used these ingredients:
- 1 box Singlong Hainanese Chicken Rice Mix
- 600g or 3 cups white rice
- 750g water or 3.5 cups (or use the classic finger method)
- 2 carrots (optional)
- 3 shiitake mushrooms (optional)
- 50g white shimeji mushroom (optional)
Step 1: As with all my rice, I make sure to add plenty of vegetables like carrots and the stems of broccoli or other vegetables I have leftover, just to add some colour and fibre.
I also add mushrooms to the rice and let it all cook in the rice cooker.
The supermarket had a promotion on these mushrooms so I wanted to try it out and see how it would taste with rice. They're a bit bigger but I didn't want to cut them too small lest they blend in with the rice and I wouldn't be able to taste it.
Step 2: Once all the vegetables and mushrooms are prepared, it's time to wash the rice. Make sure to wash it until the water is quite clear.
Step 3: Then add in the Chicken Rice Mix to the washed rice. This one came in a paste form with oil.
Make sure to mix the paste evenly with the rice so that it cooks evenly in the rice cooker.
Step 4: Dump all the vegetables into the pot as well, giving it a stir before popping it in the rice cooker to cook, or on the stovetop if you're using that.
Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the pot before I let it cook, but after about 20 minutes or so, the rice was done and it smelled heavenly!
It actually smelled almost exactly like Chicken Rice you can find in hawker stalls in Singapore. I was so excited to try it!
As a side of protein, I air-fried some frozen chicken nuggets we had. I didn't want to make any meat that would overpower the rice since I wanted to try the rice as plainly as I could to see if the mix was good. I also steamed some broccoli in the microwave for some added vegetables.
Overall it was a simple meal but I'm so glad the rice turned out really delicious! It tasted like a healthier version of what you can find outside for twice the price. The typical chicken rice you'd find outside in Singapore would be much oilier and fattier because of the chicken fat. So I'd say this was a good adjustment. It still had the good essence of chicken rice and while it still had a considerable amount of oil, for 3 cups of rice it distributed quite well so it's not as oily anymore.
You know the chicken rice is good when you can eat the rice on its own and I think this fit that criteria pretty well. The meat and vegetables were an added bonus but tbh the rice is honestly good on its own. Now I don't have to spend 5 dollars to buy unhealthy and unsatisfactory chicken rice outside anymore!
This soon became one of my go-to recipes for rice if I ever get tired of fried rice. If you're ever craving some chicken rice I highly recommend buying this mix and trying it out for yourself!
Thanks so much for reading!
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I once bought spices in packages from Malaysia. I didn't expect there to be so many delicious spices and I always stock them at home. especially Chinese food and also Indian food.
Yummi