Name: Salt Baked Chicken
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 120 min
Total time: 150 min
Ingredients: 1 organic small chicken ( ,800g, remove the head and feet); 1.5 tsp. cooking salt; 2000 g sea salt ( ,the amount of salt is very depending on your container); 1/2 tbsp. sand ginger powder ( ,I use freshly grounded); 1/2 tbsp. turmeric powder ( ,work as coloring)

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Learn how to make a yummy and easy salt baked chicken in a very traditional way. I have been thinking of making homemade salt baked chicken from last year, with the traditional way of course. Until two weeks ago, I am gifted with 5kg or coarse sea salt.

Traditional Chinese salt baked chicken uses only chicken and coarse sea salt. The chicken is wrapped with a special type of oil paper and buried in warm sea salt. With the cooperation of time (4-6 hours) and the temperature (slow heat underneath), the salt brings a faint but interesting taste to the chicken while keep most of the original flavors inside. This is recommended in a the second season of a Chinese food film series called “A Bite of China“.

Salt baked chicken has lots of transformers in China now. Among all the street stores that selling this type of chicken, only 1/4 of them use the traditional way by burring chicken in hot salt. Others choice to use a water soaking method (水浴法), steaming or oven roasting. In home-cooking, we can even cook salt baked chicken with a rice cooker or high pressure cooker.

But I feel I need to test the traditional way and give my result, just as a reference for those who are interested in trying traditional ways. If you only want to cook this once, you may feel it is quite unnecessary to use such a large amount of salt. The good news is the salt can be used repeatedly.

I use two spices in the recipe, sand ginger powder and turmeric powder. Sand ginger “山奈 or 沙姜” is a commonly used spice in Chinese cuisine. But it tastes very differently from common ginger. If there is no powder available, try to find sand ginger slices. Roast the slices on a pan until hot and then ground into powder after cooled down. Turmeric powder “姜黄粉” is mainly used for coloring. It has a fainter taste than sand ginger and yield a great yellow skin.

Ingredients

1 organic small chicken (800g), remove the head and feet and save for a chicken stock.
1 and 1/2 tsp. cooking salt
2000g sea salt, the amount of salt is very depending on your container
1/2 tbsp. sand ginger powder, I use freshly grounded
1/2 tbsp. turmeric powder, work as coloring

Steps

Remove the head and feet from the chicken and then rinse under running water. Then set aside and drain completely.

Message the cooking salt over the chicken, so we can give it a very faint salty taste. Mix sand ginger powder with turmeric powder and rub the mixture over the chicken. Marinate for at least 30 minutes and set the chicken to slightly dry out.

In the meantime, fry the sea salt in a wok for 10 minutes until the salt are hot and dried out.

Wrap the chicken with large pieces of parchment paper. Make sure the chicken is 100% well packaged and then fix with a rope.

Get a clay pot or casting iron and place 3 cups of salt on the bottom. Place the chicken in and cover the the rest of the salt.

Heat over slow fire for 40 minutes, turn off fire and keep the chicken inside for another 30 to 40 minutes. Then dig the chicken out, remove the papers. Traditionally we have two ways of serving salt baked chicken, cutting into small chunks or hand shredding. I love the second method. Cut off the legs and wings, save the skins for topping. Shred the breast and meat from other part, place in the bottom of the plate and then cover with the skins.

The chicken itself is yummy enough, but my favorite serving way is to dip a small part of the chicken with a spice mixture. One bite, two flavors.

By the way, if you love to cook whole chicken, check Chinese cantonese roasted chicken (广式烧鸡) and Chinese style braised chicken with spices and soy sauce (脱骨卤鸡), and in summer time, you must try tender and milk white cut chicken and spicy Sichuan mouthwatering chicken.