Salty Chicken, not tea

[teoh@cs.utk.edu]

Here is one for the salty chiecken.  I don't have one for the salty
tea.  Anyone can send me the recipe ?


Hakka Salt Chicken steamed.
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(By molly.lee@teor.com April 11th 1995)

Dipping sauce to be prepared after the chicken and rice is cooked.
--------------

About 3 or 4 scallions (depending on how many people, less scallions if
there are less people partaking in the meal)

1 to 2 teaspoon cooking oil (mom likes using pure virgin olive oil)

About 2 or 3 tablespoon Soy sauce and a pinch of salt.

Crush and dice up the scallions, put into a small plate.  Heat up the
oil until hot, pour over the scallions.  Pour the soy sauce and pinch of
salt over the hot oil-scallion mixture and mix with a fork.


Chicken
-------

1 whole chicken cleaned, leave skin on.

2 - 3 lbs Rock Salt

Put rock salt into a container, place raw chicken into the salt, make
sure it's all covered by the rock salt.  Leave overnight.

Next day, take out chicken, shake off all the rock salt pieces and then
rinse chicken in cold water.  One quick rinse under cold running water.
Now you may remove the skin if you want to.

Cut up some spring onions, place chicken into a large bowl and steam it.
When Chicken is almost done, put in the spring onions and steam until
chicken is cooked.  Usually takes about 1.5 hours, at least, I cook for
that long to make sure the chicken is fully cooked.  After the Chicken
is done, take out the bowl and put on a plate to cool before you cut it
up.  Take the juice from the steaming in the bowl and add it to rice, if
the juice isn't enough to cook the rice, add water.  When the rice is
cooked, serve the chicken over the rice, with dipping sauce on the side.
We usually garnish this with either fresh or slightly pickled cucumbers.
Sometimes, we eat it with pickled Chinese turnip or Chinese parsnips.

Another variation of this theme is to make soup out of the chicken.  We
usually put dried veggies into the soup.

******************************************************************

Hakka Rock Salt Chicken "Roasted?"
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Dipping sauce

A piece of ginger, about the size of your thumb or less.

1 teaspoon oil,

1 teaspoon chopped up or diced finely, green/spring onion,

1 pinch of salt.

1 whole chicken (do not remove skin)

2 to 3 lbs Rock Salt.


Dipping sauce
-------------

Puree the ginger, mix in the chopped up spring onion and pinch of salt.
Put in small plate.

Heat up the oil, pour over the crushed ginger-spring onion-pinch of salt
mixture.  Mix a little and serve.

Chicken
-------

Put rock salt into a huge pot or wok, heat it up slowly, do NOT burn the
salt. Low to medium low heat should do...

Wash the chicken, and pat dry.  Wrap chicken in some wax paper.  Make
sure there are NO holes that the rock salt can leak into the chicken.

When the rock salt is heated up, move the rock salt a bit to make a dent
in the middle of the rock salt, place chicken into this indentation, and
cover the whole chicken with rock salt.  Make sure that the bottom part
of the chicken does NOT touch the cooking utensil, it has to rest on the
rock salt.  Now place cover on the pot or wok, lower heat to low setting
and leave it to cook.  Usually takes a few hours.  Check the chicken
every hour, when the bottom part of the chicken (nearest to the source
of heat) takes on a bit of a light brown colour, turn the chicken over
and continue to cook.  When that part of the chicken is light brown in
colour, your chicken is cooked.  Take it out of the salt unwrap and
serve over a bed of hot rice with dipping sauce on side.

There is another way to prepare rock salt chicken, it's to dip the
chicken into hot boiling water a few times until the surface of the
chicken looks like it's almost cooked. (It is still raw inside)  Then
after this is done, leave the chicken on a plate until it's pretty much
dry, then put into the rock salt, leave over night and then the next
day, steam said chicken. :)

Enjoy!

If your own recipes are different or slightly different, as I expect
them to be...please do jump in and we can share the differences and try
each other's variation of recipes out. :)