Recipe
🍽️ DINNER
Hainanese Chicken Rice
Silken poached chicken over rice cooked in its broth, with chili-ginger sauce, Singapore’s national obsession.
Singaporean · medium · serves 4
prep 20 min · cook 60 min
~1242 cal · 113g protein · 113g carbs · 33g fat · 3g fiber · 3g sugars · 8g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Hainanese chicken rice is considered a national dish of Singapore, poached chicken of silky tenderness served with rice cooked in the same fragrant chicken broth, plus a trio of dipping sauces (chili, ginger, dark soy). Its apparent simplicity hides real technique, and the dish is the source of endless devotion.
Brought by immigrants from China's Hainan island, the dish was refined in Singapore and Malaysia into a hawker icon. The secrets are in the details: the chicken poached gently and shocked in ice for a gelatinous skin, and the rice cooked in broth with ginger and pandan until aromatic.
Sold at hawker centers across Singapore and eaten daily, chicken rice is judged by the tenderness of the bird and the fragrance of the rice.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally dairy-, nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 4
1 (about 3.5 lbs) whole chicken
2.5 cups jasmine rice
4 ginger, thick slices
2 tbsp ginger, grated
4
6 cloves garlic
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 shallot, minced
2 pandan leaves, knotted
Hard to find? half a teaspoon of pandan paste, or a teaspoon of extract - frozen pandan leaves keep for months and are stocked by most Asian grocers, so the extract is the second choice rather than the first
3 tbsp chicken fat, rendered (or )
1 star anise
1 tsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp sweet dark soy sauce, to serve
2 tbsp light soy sauce
6 fresh red Thai bird chilies
5 cloves garlic (for the chili sauce)
1 tsp sugar (for the chili sauce)
1 lime (for the chili sauce)
1/2 cucumber, sliced, to serve
generous salt
Instructions
1
Submerge the chicken (or tofu and mushrooms) in just-boiling water with the ginger slices, scallions, star anise, and salt. Trim off the fatty deposits first and render them for the rice.
2
Return to the barest simmer, cover, then turn off the heat and let it poach in the residual heat for 45 minutes (20 for the plant version).
✎ Chef’s note
Poaching gently off the heat, rather than boiling, is what keeps the chicken silky and just-set. A hard boil turns it stringy.
3
Plunge the chicken into iced water for 10 minutes to set the silken texture, and keep every drop of the poaching stock.
4
Fry the garlic, shallot, and half the grated ginger in the rendered chicken fat with the sesame oil, add the rice and toast it until every grain glistens, then cook it in the poaching stock with the knotted pandan leaves.
✎ Chef’s note
Two things make Hainanese rice: frying the grains in rendered chicken fat, and cooking them in the poaching stock rather than water. The pandan is the Singaporean touch, and it is what the national heritage board singles out as the local addition to the Hainanese original.
5
Pound the chilies, garlic, remaining ginger, sugar, and salt to a paste, then loosen with lime juice, rice vinegar, and a splash of hot stock. The garlic is not optional: the real sauce is aggressively garlicky.
6
Slice the chicken, dress with light soy and sesame oil, and serve over the rice with the chili sauce, a saucer of sweet dark soy, cucumber, and a cup of the broth.
Singapore hawker tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Singapore. Hawker culture in Singapore was inscribed on UNESCO's representative list on 16 December 2020, the country's first inscription. What was listed is the whole arrangement rather than any dish: the centres themselves, the stall licences, the shared tables and the habit of eating most meals out of them.
🗺️
Singapore. Singapore is a hawker-center paradise where Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Peranakan cuisines collide, Hainanese chicken rice, chili crab, laksa, and kaya toast. Food is the national obsession, and the hawker stall its temple.
🌍
Asia. Fermentation is the thread that runs the whole way across: soy sauce and miso, Korean doenjang and kimchi, Southeast Asian fish sauces, the soured batter behind an idli. Chilli is the newcomer among them, arriving only after 1500 with Portuguese and Spanish traders, which makes the heat in Sichuan, Thai and Korean cooking far younger than the fermenting underneath it.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Singapore
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Pulut HitamA warm porridge of black glutinous rice sweetened with palm sugar and finished with salty coconut cream, a Nyonya classic.
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Good to know
Storing it: Cool leftover rice quickly and refrigerate within an hour. Keep up to 2 days and reheat until piping hot all the way through.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Hainanese Chicken Rice?
Silken poached chicken over rice cooked in its broth, with chili-ginger sauce, Singapore’s national obsession.
Where does Hainanese Chicken Rice come from?
Hainanese Chicken Rice is a Singaporean dish from Singapore, Singapore.
Can Hainanese Chicken Rice be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Hainanese Chicken Rice recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Hainanese Chicken Rice safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Hainanese Chicken Rice take to make?
About 80 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 60 minutes cooking), serving 4.
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