Thai Chicken & Rice ‘Khao Mun Gai’

Remove as much excess skin and fat from the chicken as possible. Reserve the trimmings for later. 

Place the chicken stock, ginger and spring onions in a large stock pot over high heat. Rub the chicken inside and out with a generous amount of salt. Then add the chicken into the stock. Reduce the heat to medium and gently simmer for an hour or until the chicken is cooked through. You’ll need to scoop off some of the foam that rises to the surface every so often. 

In the meantime, make the rice. Place the chicken trimmings into a saucepan over medium-high heat and cook for about 10 minutes or until you have a couple of tablespoons of fat and the chicken trimmings are golden brown. Remove and discard (or eat LOL) most of the chicken trimmings. Add the garlic into the chicken fat left in the pan and cook over a medium heat until the garlic is golden. Add the rice and stir vigorously to scrape up any of the chicken bits from the bottom of the pan. Ladle over 2 ½ cups of the chicken stock that your chicken is cooking in (top the chicken up with 2 cups of water to replace the stock). Stir and loosely cover with a lid. Cook for 10 minutes or until the rice is just tender but still a little firm. Then cover tightly with the lid, turn the heat off and rest for 10 minutes to allow the steam to finish cooking the rice. Use a fork to fluff up the rice before spooning out onto serving plates. 

To make the sauce, use a mortar and pestle to pound the coriander roots, garlic and salt to a fine paste. Mix in the remaining ingredients. 

To serve, carefully remove the chicken from the stock. Cut the legs and wings off the chicken. Remove and discard the wish bone. Then remove the breast meat. Lightly pound the breast meat with a rolling pin to tenderise it. Then slice. Serve the chicken meat with the rice, sauce and a small bowl of the chicken cooking broth. 

– Thai soybean paste is also known as yellow soy bean sauce or เต้าเจี้ยว. It’s made from fermented crushed soybeans, wheat and salt. You can find it an Asian grocery store or try searching for it online.