Salt steamed chicken
This dish is delicious eaten cold as an appetizer or as an entre.
For this dish you will need a hen, which normally weighs 4 ½ -5 pounds, not a spring chicken to get a robust tasting dish. The magical flavor starts when the salt in the bottom of the pot gets heated. The heated salt creates a steam that merge with the lemon grass, scallions, Five spice powder and star anise. Together the salted steam along with the fragrant spices gently flavors the chicken as it cooks. You will need a heavy pot, preferably cast iron with a tightfitting lid. The pot should be large enough to fit a hen. A Roasting pot is too wide to cuddle the chicken making it inappropriate for this dish.
Salt steamed chicken is a traditional Pilipino dish that has undergone numerous version. The mavens say that Clay pot is the preferred cooking vessel. Since this chicken dish originated centuries ago, perhaps it was the only cooking vessel at the time. Besides I am leery about using clay pot because it may contains lead ,which is an inert heavy metal. When lead is consumed it can lead to multiple health problems. Some historians posit that lead poisoning plagued the Roman elite with diseases such as gout, which contributed to the demise of the Roman Empire.
The world has changed and modernized for safety and efficiency. The electric or gas stove atypical of kitchens now was not designed to accommodate rounded pot bottom, as in a clay pot, unless you have a Gaggenau or European stove that is designed to accommodate a rounded bottom pot. Of course, there are adaptive device that you can buy to fit a rounded pot in todays stove burners.
Chicken cooked by steaming with salt is moist and flavorful .The flesh is soft and decadent. It is not salty as one could imagine and the fat dripped off into the salt in the bottom of the pot which is discarded.
The ingredients
6 lbs coarse kosher salt
1-41/2-5 lb chicken (Hen) dressed
2-3″ bundle of lemon grass leaves and stalks, wash and rinse
2 bunch scallions, wash and rinse, include rootlets
5 pcs star anise
1 tbsp Five spice Powder
1/2C plum sauce
1/2C Hoisin sauce
1 banana leaf (you can buy it frozen sealed in plastic wrap)Trim to fit the bottom of the pot.
How to prepare:
- Make sure you have a large pot big enough to hold the chicken with tight fitting lid.
- Rinse the chicken inside and out. Clear the chicken cavity. Drain. Pat dry
- Pour all the kosher salt into the bottom of the pot. Level salt.
- Combine the plum sauce, hoisin sauce and Chinese 5 spice in a bowl. Mix well to blend. Use a pastry brush to brush the chicken with this blended sauce. Brush inside and out.
- Rinse the scallions, banana leaf and lemon grass. Shake to remove excess water. Insert the lemon grass and scallion inside the chicken cavity, along with the star anise.
- Put the banana leaf on top of the salt to form a barrier between the salt and chicken. Put the chicken on top of the banana leaf , butt down, neck up.
- Cover pot with tight fitting lid.
- Put pot on top of the stove. Turn on heat to medium. Do not open lid. After 1 hour reduce heat to medium-low and cook for another ½ hour
- Chicken should be done in 1 1/2 hr.
- Remove pot from stove. Wait 5 minutes for the chicken juices to get reabsorb, then remove lid.
- Remove chicken from the pot. Put chicken in chopping board, Discard lemon grass, scallions and star anise. The skin of the chicken should be brownish, firm and moist. The salt should have solidified into a chunk and the drippings too salty to keep. Discard salt, drippings and banana leaves. Save the juice accumulated in the chicken cavity for dipping. Collect juice by tipping the chicken.
- Cut chicken in serving pieces. Serve hot or cold with soy sauce or plum sauce.
Serves 8