The Sinosphere · Volume 31, The Wok’s Breath, the Tea Trolley and the Coconut Coast
Yim guk gai, Hakka salt-baked chicken
Huizhou, Hakka Guangdong
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 30
- Researched
- Researched from 118 sources in the brief
Huizhou's own hill-country technique, carrying the Hakka thread. Indirect radiant heat from a mound of hot salt does what an open oven cannot.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. 1.5 hours.
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, about 1.4kg
- a generous handful, rubbed well into the cavity and skin salt, rubbed into the cavity
- 2 to 3 kg coarse sea salt
- enough to wrap the bird completely oiled or greaseproof paper, to wrap the bird
Method
- Rub salt into the chicken's cavity and skin, then truss it and wrap the whole bird in oiled paper.
- Heat the coarse sea salt in a large wok or heavy pot until very hot, stirring so it heats evenly.
- Bury the wrapped chicken in the hot salt, mounding it completely around and over the bird.
- Cook, undisturbed, for around an hour, the salt's own retained heat cooking the chicken through by slow, even, indirect radiant heat.
- Unwrap carefully, joint, and serve with a simple dip of oil, spring onion and ginger.
What a modern chef changes
The same indirect heat, monitored rather than guessed at.
Rung 6
Method
- Pre-warm the coarse salt in the dehydrator, element off, or in a low oven, so it goes into the pot already close to its working temperature rather than needing to heat unevenly from cold.
- Insert a probe thermometer through the paper before burying the bird, and cook to a target internal temperature rather than a fixed hour, checking without unwrapping the salt mound itself.
- Rest the bird still wrapped for 10 minutes after cooking, letting the retained heat finish gently exactly as the traditional method's undisturbed hour already does.