Chicken In Soy Sauce

When my husband finds a recipe that he likes (whether on the internet or the newspaper), he will pass it to me. You know, like putting in an order at his personal restaurant :)

Well, he passed me this recipe for "Chicken in Soya Sauce" that was published in the newspaper. It's by Amy Beh. I thought it was like the usual chicken in soya sauce that I usually cook, something like "Tau Yew Bak" except using chicken. So I ignored his recipe for many weeks. Finally, after a bit of pestering, I decided to try out the recipe.

VERDICT... It is delicious and nothing like the chicken in soy sauce I use to cook. The difference is the plentiful helping of fried shallot and garlic. If you like those, you'll like this dish.

You can find the original recipe here. BUT for your convenience, I'll post it here on my blog too.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 chicken
• 30 shallots (chopped fine)
• 15 cloves of garlic (sliced)
• 60g rock sugar
• 100ml light soya sauce
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 liter water
• 2 tbsp oil

DIRECTIONS:

• Fry shallots and garlic until golden brown and fragrant. Put aside.
• Cook the rock sugar. When it is almost dissolved, add in the soy sauce and fish sauce. Pour in the water and let it boil.
• Add in the chicken. Adjust the heat to medium high. 
• After about 10 minutes, put the shallots and garlic back in together with chicken and stock.
• Turn down the heat to low, cover and cook until chicken is done.
• If there's too much gravy, you can scoop out the chicken and continue to boil the gravy till it is reduced. 

If you follow the original recipe, it calls for 1.5kg of kampung chicken, AND you're to leave it whole. Do not cut it yet. Just wash and clean. The whole chicken is to simmer in the stock until cooked. Then you remove and chop it up.

HOWEVER, I kinda missed that part about keeping the chicken whole and had chopped it all up before cooking it. Plus, I used regular chicken instead of kampung chicken. It still turned out okay. Actually, I think I prefer to cook it this way because it is quite a hassle to cut the chicken after cooking it. I usually have my chicken seller do all the cutting for me :)  I confess, I'm really lousy when it comes to cutting up a chicken.

I had plenty of gravy. I used the leftover gravy to cook noodles the next day.

My DH enjoyed this dish. My youngest daughter absolutely loved the gravy (because it is a bit sweet). She had 3 helpings of rice just so she could eat it with the gravy. I think she would have just drunk the gravy like soup if we let her.

So, if you're wondering what other chicken dish you can cook, try this.