Beggar's Chicken

A whole chicken wrapped in leaves, sealed inside a flour and salt casing and baked for hours, then broken open at the table.

Chicken, Pork. Not vegetarian — contains a sausage casing, which is gut unless it says otherwise, chicken, pork.

Ingredients

For the chicken

• 1 whole chicken, about 1.5 kg
• 6 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked and sliced
• 100 g pork belly, in strips
• 40 g preserved mustard greens, rinsed and chopped
• 30 ml light soy sauce
• 30 ml Shaoxing wine
• 20 g ginger, sliced
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon five spice

To wrap

• 4 dried lotus leaves, soaked
• greaseproof paper

For the casing

• 1 kg plain flour
• 300 g coarse salt, for the casing, which is discarded
• about 450 ml water

Method

1. THE CASING IS NOT PASTRY AND IS NOT EATEN. It is a sealed oven built around the bird, and the whole dish is the difference between roasting a chicken and steaming it in its own juice for three hours. Nothing escapes, so nothing browns and nothing dries out, and the meat comes off the bone by looking at it.
2. THE SEAL IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS. One crack and the steam leaves, and three hours later you have a dry chicken and a hard lump of salt dough. Check it after thirty minutes and patch any split with a fresh piece of dough.
3. Chicken dried thoroughly, inside and out.
4. Mushrooms, pork belly, mustard greens, soy, wine, ginger, sugar, salt and five spice mixed together and packed into the cavity. Legs tied together tightly.
5. The whole bird wrapped in the soaked lotus leaves, overlapping and tucked under, then in greaseproof paper and tied. The leaves are what the dish smells of when it is opened; the paper stops the dough sticking to them.
6. Casing: flour and salt mixed, water added until it comes to a stiff dough -- firmer than bread dough and barely kneadable. It should not slump.
7. Rolled out to about 1.5 cm thick, large enough to go right round. The parcel set in the middle, the dough drawn up and pinched shut, with every seam pressed twice.
8. Oven to 200C for the first 30 minutes to set the casing hard, then down to 160C for 2 hours 30 minutes.
9. Out, and rested 20 minutes. The casing will be rock hard and pale brown.
10. BROKEN OPEN AT THE TABLE with the back of a heavy knife or a small hammer, one firm blow on the top. Lift the casing away in pieces and discard it -- it is salt and flour and is not food. Cut the paper and fold the lotus leaves back.
11. Served straight from the leaves with the cavity juices spooned over. There is no sauce and it does not want one.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under China · All recipes