How to make five-spice chicken?

The cooking methods of five-spice chicken are not much different from those of ordinary braised chicken. The ingredients are simple salt, sand ginger, garlic, oil and soy sauce. The aroma of these five ingredients is the representative flavor of five-spice chicken. When making five-spice chicken, you need to pay attention to the control of heat and the proportion of seasonings.

Ingredients: a tender hen, 5 grams of salt, 3 grams of galangal powder, chopped green onion, sesame oil, and soy sauce as appropriate

Preparation method: Wash the hen, mix the seasoning and spread it evenly on the chicken's inner cavity, place it in a ventilated place to dry for two hours, then steam it in a pot over high heat for 20 minutes. It will become a "golden and bright, oily, crispy skin, tender meat and fragrant bones" spiced chicken.

Tips:

1. When steaming chicken, increase or decrease the time according to the size of the chicken and the strength of the fire. It will usually be cooked in 20-30 minutes. After the steamed chicken is cut open, if the blood on the top of the thigh bone is dark red, it meets the standard; if the blood is too red, it is not cooked through; if the blood turns black, it is overcooked.

2. The seasoning of five-spice chicken is very simple, mainly sand ginger (available in pharmacies). Sand ginger contains aromatic substances such as lauric aldehyde, which combines with the amino acids in chicken to form fresh and fragrant ingredients. The reason why five-spice chicken is praised by gourmets is that the main secret is to use sand ginger as the dish.

3. Chemical degradation of chicken itself: Freshly killed chicken does not taste good. It needs to be left for a while until it is cooked, and then it will taste better. People who don't understand the mystery think that the chicken is cooked immediately after being slaughtered. In fact, there is a complex change process called "degradation". After the chicken is slaughtered, the protein is broken down into soluble amino acids by the action of various enzymes such as protease, which then present umami taste under the action of salt. According to tests, the degradation time of chicken is 2 hours.