In February 2020 while the world was on the heels of a global pandemic that continues to impact the entire world, I was preparing for one hell of a birthday trip. For 2 1/2 weeks I traveled around Vietnam and Cambodia, while kicking off and ending my travels in Singapore. The city was almost like a fantasy world between beautiful light shows, over the top shopping centers, you name it and it was bigger in Singapore.

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The street hawker scene in Singapore is very strong and represents a melting pot of so many Asian cuisines it was kind of hard to pick a dish that may have its origins in Singapore. But I decided to go with something that I saw everywhere yet didn’t manage to try while I was there: Chicken Rice.

On the surface, this looks to be a very straightforward dish. It’s chicken. It’s rice. Maybe a dipping sauce. Why would I go out of my way to eat this while surrounded by so many other options in Singapore? This may explain why I didn’t try it while I was there but thought I’d see what all the fuss was about for this cooking challenge.

I elected NOT to make my own chili sauce or roast a whole chicken for this, and stuck with poaching the chicken breasts I already had readily available. (On a side note, I recall doing a major pantry/refrigerator purge in early February so I imagine there will be a pattern over the next several posts of tweaks I made to dishes to work with what I already had or simplify.) I think the trick to the flavor here is cooking the rice in the rendered chicken fat. I did that to a point, but given that I didn’t take the extra steps of cooking a whole chicken first, a little of that flavor might have been lost. You can find the recipe that I adapted my take on this dish off of here: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/hainanese-chicken-rice/.

Overall Level of Effort: 2

Skill Level: Beginner

Would Make Again? No

Additional Notes: I wasn’t blown away with this dish and given that the flavor was kind of “meh” I didn’t see this dish as worth the grams of fat involved into trying to achieve that special flavor.