Soy sauce chicken gets a Coca-Cola twist.
Growing up, one of my favorite comfort dishes was my dad’s version of chicken poached in soy sauce. That might sound gross to the uninitiated, but hear me out: Picture a tender, juicy, whole chicken poached in an intoxicating blend of dark soy sauce, rock sugar, spices, and aromatic Chinese rose wine. It’s like Hainanese chicken went on vacation to umami town, took a spa day, and came back with a honey sweet tan.—the many roasted and braised meats you can find in cheap Hong Kong eateries.
Plus, most recipes for soy sauce chicken call for at least a"fistful" of rock sugar, which translates to roughly half a pound of the sweet stuff. There’s nothing inherently healthy about that dish, and I will make no such claim to the contrary for Coca-Cola chicken, either. In reality, you don’t consume all of that sugar. The sauce seasons the meat and coats the exterior of the chicken, and only some of that sauce ends up on your plate .
My dad doesn’t really read cookbooks. At least, not the ones that I read. He doesn’t follow food trends, he’s never heard of Serious Eats, and he probably thinks kombucha is an island. But he does have the best palate I’ve ever encountered. And, perhaps most of all, he’s a physicist at heart: Analytical and painstakingly methodical, grounded in pragmatism, ruled by the forces of the natural world. He definitely put most of his experience points into critical thinking and deadpan humor.
According to my dad,"Toasting your spices makes a difference. I’ve done it both ways. Take the time to wake everything up." Initially, I just threw everything together with the poaching liquid and brought it to a boil, resulting in a flatter, less pungent flavor. Toasting the spices and aromatics in a little oil made a huge difference in flavor both in the sauce and the actual meat.
As for cooking time and heat, my father listed no less than six different methods for achieving the proper cook, based on the weight of the chicken and how much time you have. There’s the cold start"set-it-and-forget-it" method, which involves cooling down the simmered poaching liquid with ice cubes, adding the chicken, then bringing everything to a simmer, covering the pot, shutting the heat off, and letting the chicken sit until it’s cooked.
My favorite part about this recipe is the aftermath."You should store your chicken in the sauce. It’ll be way better, way more intense the next day," my dad recommends. And the best part? You can use the poaching liquid again to poach more chicken, fortifying the sauce until you get this soy-cola-chicken mega-sauce concoction."It just gets better and better. Don’t waste anything."I recently cooked my version of Coca-Cola Chicken for my dad."This is tasty...
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