Hainanese chicken rice: a Hainanese name, a Singaporean classic

Hainanese chicken rice is poached chicken with rice cooked in chicken fat and stock.
The name comes from Hainan island. The dish as the world knows it was made by Hainanese migrants who went south to Singapore in the early 1900s.

What Hainanese chicken rice is

A plate of Hainanese chicken rice is two things: poached chicken and chicken fat rice.

The chicken is simmered whole — never fried. In Hainan the standard is to cook it to just under done, with a trace of pink at the bone: not raw, but not dry, not cloying. That is considered the best texture.

The rice is cooked in chicken fat and the stock the chicken was poached in. Done well, every grain stands separate, glossed with chicken fat, carrying a deep chicken aroma and a faint note of ginger and garlic.

Where the name comes from: Wenchang chicken

On Hainan itself the dish usually is not called "Hainanese chicken rice". Around Wenchang on the island's north-east, Wenchang chicken is the local speciality — and it is the prototype.

So the word that matters in "Hainanese chicken rice" is Hainanese. It marks where the people who cooked it came from, not where the dish was invented.

How it became a Singaporean classic

The migration wave of the early twentieth century took large numbers of Hainanese to Singapore and Malaysia to work. Cooking this meal was something Hainanese workers did routinely, and the reputation of "Hainanese chicken rice" grew from there. The dish travelled with migrants to Malaysia and Thailand, and became a fixture across Southeast Asia.

Today it is one of Singapore's signature dishes. A dish named for Hainan became a national dish of Singapore — which is exactly how Nanyang food works: the name remembers where it came from, the flavour grows where it landed.

Hainan version vs Singapore version

Both use Wenchang chicken, but the birds chosen and their rearing time differ, and so does the texture:

In Singapore it is normally served with chilli sauce, ginger paste and a dark soy. The chicken itself is barely seasoned — the flavour comes from the dips and from that bowl of rice.

The rice is the real test

First-timers watch the chicken. Connoisseurs watch the rice.

Chicken fat rice is not "rice with oil stirred through it". The rice is cooked in chicken fat and poaching stock, and the result turns on the ratio of fat to liquid, how salty the stock is, and how much water the particular rice absorbs. Too wet and the grains clump; too dry and the fat has nothing to carry it.

Hence the saying: the chicken sets the floor, the rice sets the ceiling.

Eating it at BUGIS

BUGIS Laksa & Hainanese Chicken Rice is on Level 2 of Plaza Hollywood, Diamond Hill, Hong Kong. The chef, Nguyễn Văn Hùng, is Vietnamese; his family cooked Singaporean food in Singapore for three generations, over sixty years.

See the full BUGIS menu →

Common questions

Is Hainanese chicken rice a Hainanese dish or a Singaporean one?

Both, in different senses. The prototype is Wenchang chicken from Hainan island. The name, and the form most people know today, were made by Hainanese migrants in Singapore and Malaysia in the early 1900s. Hainanese by origin, Singaporean by fame.

Is the chicken fried or poached?

Traditionally poached — the whole bird is simmered, not fried. Cooked to just under done, with a trace of pink at the bone, which keeps it tender rather than dry.

What is the difference between Hainanese chicken rice and chicken fat rice?

Chicken fat rice is the rice. Hainanese chicken rice is the whole plate — poached chicken plus that rice.

Where to find us

Sources

• "The Endless Old Flavours of Hainanese Chicken Rice" — Hainan Daily, on the Hainan Provincial People's Government website (28 March 2018). The account here of how the dish is made, how the Hainan and Singapore versions differ in the birds they use, and how it spread with migrants comes from this article.