Braised Soya Sauce Chicken Recipe

This recipe is adapted from a soya sauce chicken recipe I read online on rasamalaysia.com and tweaked to accommodate additional ingredients included in a more luxurious recipe provided by my friend, Gastronaut Diary.

I have adjusted the quantities of light and dark soya sauce in the recipe so that there is just enough soya sauce liquid to steep the chicken in, but not too much that could potentially go to waste.

The remaining sauce can be used to braise soya sauce eggs; just add shell-off hard boiled eggs to the sauce and boil for about 10 minutes until eggs turns dark.

Ingredients

1 whole chicken cut into two halves

2-inch ginger (skin peeled and lightly pounded)

4 to 6 cloves garlic (lightly pounded)

2 stalks scallions (cut into 2-inch lengths)

2 star anise

5 to 6 cardamon

2-3 bay leaves

1 leaf of licorice root

1 cinnamon stick (about 4-inch length)

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup red dates dark soy sauce

2 tablespoons of Chinese rose wine

A few dashes of white pepper powder

15g rock sugar

2 cups water

Instructions

Put all the ingredients, except the chicken, into a sauce pot and bring it to boil on high heat for 15 minutes.

Add the chicken halves into the pot and boil on high heat for about 10 minutes. Turn the chicken to expose different sides of the chicken to the black sauce.

Lower the heat to simmer for about 20 minutes, turning the chicken again mid-way. Be careful not to overcook the chicken.

Turn off fire and let the chicken steep in the soy sauce mixture for a few hours to soak in the flavor.

Dish out the chicken halves, chop into pieces and serve. Top with cilantro.