药材炖鸡 Steam Herbal Chicken

This is a simple and nourishing dish. Hope you will like it too.

Ingredient:

2 nos Chicken whole drumstick

1 tbsp Dark Soy

2 tbsp oil

1 pkt Herbal Soup Mix (药材汤料)

300-500ml Water (depends on how much gravy you like)

1-2 tsp Oyster sauce

1-2 tsp Soy sauce

1-2 tsp Chinese Shao Shing rice wine (绍兴酒)

1 tsp Dark soy (optional, just for the colour)

Pepper to taste

Drizzle of Sesame oil

1 tbsp Corn starch mix with 2 tbsp water

Method:

1. Pat dry the chicken and rub the dark soy onto the skin.

2. Heat the oil in a frying pan, shallow fry the skin part to get a nice brown colour.

3. Dish out and set aside.

4. Bring a pot of water to boil, add the herbal soup mix.

5. Let it boil for 10 mins or so.

6. Add oyster sauce, soy sauce, rice wine, dark soy, sesame oil and pepper to taste. (Season it according to your taste)

7. Add the corn starch mix to thicken the gravy. Turn off the fire when the gravy is thicken.

8. Place a big sheet of aluminum foil in a deep dish or bowl. Place the chicken drumstick in the middle and pour the gravy and put the herbal onto the meat. (I wanted to serve it individually, so I have make two parcel as two individual serving)

9. Wrap the chicken up like a parcel.

10. Steam the parcel for 2 hours.

11. It's ready to serve. You could serve it with steam rice or noodles.

Today we had it with some buckwheat soba noodles. So yummy!

p/s : I used the Herbal Soup mix which can easily get in any supermarket. Usually is ready mix. It consist of：

Red dates (红枣)

Gou Ji berries (枸杞)

Dang Shen (当参)

Wai Shan (淮山)

Bei Qi (北芪)

Yu Zhu (玉竹)

Shu Di (熟地)

Chuan Xiong (川芎)

* If the soup mix you bought do not have Shu Di (熟地) it does't matter, with "Shu Di" it will give a dark/black colour soup. So you could just add dark soy in your gravy if your soup mix do not have "Shu Di".