The Simple Soy Sauce–Braised Hen Dinner My Household Requests All of the Time

Once I was rising up in Hong Kong, my total household—my mother and father, two sisters, and my six units of aunts and uncles, together with my many cousins—would pile into my grandparent’s condominium for dinner each Sunday. Each week, with out fail, my grandparents churned out an impressive meal with sufficient meals to feed all 33 of us. We at all times began dinner with a soup, resembling pork broth with arrowroot, and we regularly ate complete steamed fish, leafy greens blanched or stir-fried with sliced ginger and enormous cloves of garlic, and steamed Chinese language meatloaf speckled with salted duck egg. The pièce de résistance, although, was my grandmother’s soy sauce hen, which she ready by gently simmering an entire chicken in a mix of water, soy sauce, scallions, and contemporary ginger. She’d reduce up the whole hen, prepare it neatly on a platter, and serve it with a easy ginger and scallion dipping sauce. 

Although I not reside in Hong Kong, my grandmother nonetheless makes soy sauce hen for me at any time when I go to—and it’s at all times simply as scrumptious as I keep in mind it being after I was a baby. The meat is unfailingly tender and moist, and the pores and skin, tinted brown with soy sauce, has savory depth and a touch of sweetness from rock sugar. It’s a taste that evokes recollections of house and household for me, and one I yearn for thus incessantly that I used to be impressed to create my very own model of the dish. My rendition, nonetheless, is a neater weeknight-friendly dish that requires no complete hen and no mild poaching—and combines my love for the flavors of the basic with my fondness for crispy hen pores and skin.

Dry-Brine Your Hen

When you can actually make scrumptious hen with out dry-brining, it’s price taking the time to dry-brine if you’d like probably the most flavorful and tender hen. Dry-brining merely refers to salting and resting meals (usually meat) earlier than you prepare dinner it, and as we’ve usually talked about on Critical Eats, a dry brine is more practical than a moist one if you’d like juicy, crispy-skinned, nicely seasoned meat. As former Critical Eats senior culinary editor Sasha famous in his information to dry-brining, moist brines can waterlog your meat, diluting its taste and hindering browning. A dry brine, alternatively, attracts out the pure moisture from the meat, making a “concentrated brine that, when given sufficient time, is of course absorbed again into the meat earlier than cooking,” Sasha notes. The result’s a nicely seasoned piece of meat that’s moist and tender, with pores and skin that crisps up simply. It’s a minimal effort step that lets time do the arduous be just right for you, and you’ll dry-brine your hen so far as three days prematurely.

MSG Is Your Buddy

Now that we have established that dry-brining is a good suggestion, the query is what to dry-brine the hen with. Right here, I attain for MSG (monosodium glutamate), an umami-rich ingredient that provides a deep savory taste to dishes. In his marinades investigation, contributor Tim Chin discovered that MSG was notably efficient in seasoning meat, extra so than simply salt and spices alone.

Based mostly on his findings, I made a decision to include MSG into my dry brine, together with salt, 5 spice powder, darkish brown sugar, and floor white pepper. Most conventional soy sauce hen recipes do not name for 5 spice powder, however the ingredient—a mix of star anise, cloves, cassia bark or cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and fennel seeds—provides an extra layer of taste to the dish, and gives a pleasing heat that enhances the darkish brown sugar’s molasses notes.

For Tender Hen With Crispy Pores and skin, Sear It—Then Gently Braise

As a substitute of the normal technique of simmering a complete hen on the stovetop, which requires cautious babysitting to make sure it by no means reaches a boil—a recipe for powerful, rubbery poultry—I put together the hen like I might a Western-style braise. I sear hen thighs till the pores and skin is crispy, then take away the hen and sauté scallions, ginger, and garlic with brown sugar, 5 spice, star anise, and cassia bark or a cinnamon stick earlier than deglazing with soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, and water. I nestle the hen thighs again into the sauce skin-side-up, switch it to the oven, then let it gently prepare dinner at 300ºF (150ºC). The result’s hen with tender meat that is filled with taste and has crispy pores and skin, tender scallions, and a deeply savory sauce that is excellent alongside rice. 

This might not be my grandmother’s hen, but it surely’s a detailed sufficient rendition that’s scrumptious and simple sufficient for me to whip up on a weeknight with out requiring me to babysit my hen on the range. I serve it with stir-fried bok choy to spherical out the meal, although the dish actually does not want something greater than bowls of rice on the facet. My husband and youngster love this meal as a lot as I do, and request it incessantly. I might not be sitting at my grandparent’s desk each Sunday evening, but it surely actually feels prefer it after I make these soy sauce–braised hen thighs for my family. And who is aware of? It would even develop into our personal Sunday evening custom.