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

After 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 residence for dinner each Sunday. Each week, with out fail, my grandparents churned out a powerful meal with sufficient meals to feed all 33 of us. We all the time began dinner with a soup, comparable to pork broth with arrowroot, and we frequently ate entire 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 a complete chook in a combination of water, soy sauce, scallions, and contemporary ginger. She’d reduce up your complete hen, prepare it neatly on a platter, and serve it with a easy ginger and scallion dipping sauce. 

Although I now not reside in Hong Kong, my grandmother nonetheless makes soy sauce hen for me at any time when I go to—and it’s all the time simply as scrumptious as I keep in mind it being once I was a toddler. 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 residence and household for me, and one I yearn for thus continuously that I used to be impressed to create my very own model of the dish. My rendition, nonetheless, is a better weeknight-friendly dish that requires no entire hen and no light poaching—and combines my love for the flavors of the traditional with my fondness for crispy hen pores and skin.

Dry-Brine Your Hen

Whilst you can actually make scrumptious hen with out dry-brining, it’s value taking the time to dry-brine if you need essentially the most flavorful and tender hen. Dry-brining merely refers to salting and resting meals (sometimes meat) earlier than you cook dinner it, and as we’ve typically talked about on Critical Eats, a dry brine is more practical than a moist one if you need juicy, crispy-skinned, effectively 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, however, 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 effectively 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 exhausting be just right for you, and you’ll dry-brine your hen so far as three days prematurely.

MSG Is Your Good friend

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 significantly efficient in seasoning meat, extra so than simply salt and spices alone.

Primarily based 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 a further layer of taste to the dish, and supplies a nice heat that enhances the darkish brown sugar’s molasses notes.

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

As an alternative of the standard methodology of simmering a whole hen on the stovetop, which requires cautious babysitting to make sure it by no means reaches a boil—a recipe for robust, rubbery poultry—I put together the hen like I’d 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 cook dinner at 300ºF (150ºC). The result’s hen with tender meat that is stuffed with taste and has crispy pores and skin, tender scallions, and a deeply savory sauce that is good 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 would not want something greater than bowls of rice on the aspect. My husband and baby love this meal as a lot as I do, and request it continuously. I might not be sitting at my grandparent’s desk each Sunday night time, but it surely actually feels prefer it once I make these soy sauce–braised hen thighs for my family. And who is aware of? It’d even turn into our personal Sunday night time custom.