Hand-torn Chicken in Onion Dressing

Pulled Chicken is a famous Cantonese chicken dish. Chicken is Cantonese’s favourite meat, and usually cooked in very simple ways. We usually buy in pulled chicken because it requires troublesome techniques in making the boiled chicken. However, using rice cooker to make chicken is very popular recently and though it is still not as good as the boiled chicken, it’s the easiest way to maintain the similar tastiness.

My grandma has used rice cooker to cook chicken since I was small. She would cook a whole chicken then chopped it into small pieces. In my recipe, I like to use a lot of spring onion and onion to flavour the chicken. The ingredients and cooking method of this dish are so simple, well, rice cooker is essential.

The mechanism of rice cooker is to steam slowly. So chicken cooked in this way would be very juicy and tender.

Ingredients –
Best quality of chicken, half, 500g. Try to use the best quality of fresh chicken you can obtain. You could use chicken thighs only but don’t use chicken breast, meat with bones are much tastier than those without;
Spring onion, a generous bunch, about 60g;
Onion, half;
Garlic, 5 cloves;
Salt, 1tbsp;
Chinese rice wine, 3tbsp.

How to do –
1. Remove the tail, neck, or any part you won’t eat, but do keep the skin. Rub 1tbsp of salt on the chicken inside out, keep in fridge and marinade for half an hour. 1tbsp for 500g of chicken is salty enough, though you could adjust later;

2. Onion sliced; spring onion cleaned and cut into long stick; garlic peeled;

3. Layer the vegetable at the bottom of the rice cooker and chicken on top. Put in 3tbsp of Chinese rice wine or any Chinese cooking wine. Vegetables and rice wine can produce moist for steaming;

4. Choose ‘rice cooking’ mode, turn on and let it cook till finish. Turn the chicken upside down once. The chicken should be totally cooked. Check with a chopstick. If the chicken is not cooked, then turn on the mode for the second time;

5. Take out the chicken and the sauce at the bottom, let it cool down in room temperature or even in fridge. Don’t wash the pot, steam rice directly and that’s the delicious chicken oil rice!
6. The chicken is so moist, tender and off bone easily. Gently tear it apart and pull the meat into slices;

7. Pour the sauce on top and some toasted sesame seeds, gradually mix then serve.