The Simple Soy Sauce–Braised Rooster Dinner My Household Requests All of the Time

Once I was rising up in Hong Kong, my total household—my mother and father, two sisters, and my six units of aunts and uncles, together with my many cousins—would pile into my grandparent’s condo for dinner each Sunday. Each week, with out fail, my grandparents churned out an impressive meal with sufficient meals to feed all 33 of us. We at all times began dinner with a soup, similar to pork broth with arrowroot, and we regularly ate entire steamed fish, leafy greens blanched or stir-fried with sliced ginger and huge cloves of garlic, and steamed Chinese language meatloaf speckled with salted duck egg. The pièce de résistance, although, was my grandmother’s soy sauce hen, which she ready by gently simmering an entire chook in a mix of water, soy sauce, scallions, and recent ginger. She’d lower up all the hen, organize it neatly on a platter, and serve it with a easy ginger and scallion dipping sauce. 

Although I now not reside in Hong Kong, my grandmother nonetheless makes soy sauce hen for me at any time when I go to—and it’s at all times simply as scrumptious as I keep in mind it being after I was a toddler. The meat is unfailingly tender and moist, and the pores and skin, tinted brown with soy sauce, has savory depth and a touch of sweetness from rock sugar. It’s a taste that evokes reminiscences of house and household for me, and one I yearn for thus incessantly that I used to be impressed to create my very own model of the dish. My rendition, nevertheless, is a neater weeknight-friendly dish that requires no entire hen and no light poaching—and combines my love for the flavors of the basic with my fondness for crispy hen pores and skin.

Dry-Brine Your Rooster

Whilst you can definitely make scrumptious hen with out dry-brining, it’s value taking the time to dry-brine in order for you probably the most flavorful and tender hen. Dry-brining merely refers to salting and resting meals (sometimes meat) earlier than you prepare dinner it, and as we’ve usually talked about on Severe Eats, a dry brine is simpler than a moist one in order for you juicy, crispy-skinned, nicely seasoned meat. As former Severe Eats senior culinary editor Sasha famous in his information to dry-brining, moist brines can waterlog your meat, diluting its taste and hindering browning. A dry brine, however, attracts out the pure moisture from the meat, making a “concentrated brine that, when given sufficient time, is of course absorbed again into the meat earlier than cooking,” Sasha notes. The result’s a nicely seasoned piece of meat that’s moist and tender, with pores and skin that crisps up simply. It’s a minimal effort step that lets time do the arduous give you the results you want, and you may dry-brine your hen so far as three days upfront.

MSG Is Your Good friend

Now that we have established that dry-brining is a good suggestion, the query is what to dry-brine the hen with. Right here, I attain for MSG (monosodium glutamate), an umami-rich ingredient that provides a deep savory taste to dishes. In his marinades investigation, contributor Tim Chin discovered that MSG was notably efficient in seasoning meat, extra so than simply salt and spices alone.

Based mostly on his findings, I made a decision to include MSG into my dry brine, together with salt, 5 spice powder, darkish brown sugar, and floor white pepper. Most conventional soy sauce hen recipes do not name for 5 spice powder, however the ingredient—a mix of star anise, cloves, cassia bark or cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and fennel seeds—provides a further layer of taste to the dish, and supplies a nice heat that enhances the darkish brown sugar’s molasses notes.

For Tender Rooster With Crispy Pores and skin, Sear It—Then Gently Braise

As an alternative of the standard methodology of simmering a whole hen on the stovetop, which requires cautious babysitting to make sure it by no means reaches a boil—a recipe for robust, rubbery poultry—I put together the hen like I’d a Western-style braise. I sear hen thighs till the pores and skin is crispy, then take away the hen and sauté scallions, ginger, and garlic with brown sugar, 5 spice, star anise, and cassia bark or a cinnamon stick earlier than deglazing with soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and water. I nestle the hen thighs again into the sauce skin-side-up, switch it to the oven, then let it gently prepare dinner at 300ºF (150ºC). The result’s hen with tender meat that is stuffed with taste and has crispy pores and skin, tender scallions, and a deeply savory sauce that is good alongside rice. 

This will not be my grandmother’s hen, but it surely’s a detailed sufficient rendition that’s scrumptious and straightforward sufficient for me to whip up on a weeknight with out requiring me to babysit my hen on the range. I serve it with stir-fried bok choy to spherical out the meal, although the dish actually does not want something greater than bowls of rice on the aspect. My husband and baby love this meal as a lot as I do, and request it incessantly. I will not be sitting at my grandparent’s desk each Sunday night time, but it surely definitely feels prefer it after I make these soy sauce–braised hen thighs for my circle of relatives. And who is aware of? It would even grow to be our personal Sunday night time custom.