Soy Sauce Chicken

Asian food seems to be the theme here lately on the good ole blog. Maybe that's because many of my favorite recipes are the comfort foods from my mom's kitchen.  Soy sauce chicken was a house favorite growing up.  This dish even met our 15 month old critic's approval!  Aaron actually ate a few pieces of meat and hard boiled egg, both of which are a rare occurrence.

Soy Sauce Chicken is another recipe my mom learned from her Chinese cooking teacher, Mrs. Ting.  It consists of a whole cut up fryer chicken that is simmered in a sweet seasoned soy sauce mixture and served with hard boiled eggs and green onions.  If you've never cooked with the licorice-like flavored Chinese star anise, you'll love the way it lightly accentuates this dish. Here's what it looks like...

Soy Sauce Chicken

1 fryer chicken, cut into pieces

2/3 cup soy sauce

4 slices of ginger

5 pieces of anise seed

2 T. white cooking wine

1/2-2/3 cup sugar (I use 1/2)

2 cups water

Save for serving:

2-3 green onions

3 or 4 hard boiled eggs

Combine soy sauce, ginger, star anise, wine, sugar and water in an electric skillet or large cooking pan.  Heat and stir until all the sugar is dissolved.  Place the chicken in the pan with the sauce, cover. Cook 10 minutes.  

Remove cover, reduce heat to a low simmer.   Occasionally turn and baste the chicken.   Cook 20 minutes per pound of chicken.  Place the hard boiled eggs in the pan with the chicken to absorb some of the sauce.

Mrs. Ting had a trick for cutting the hard boiled eggs into a zig-zag pattern.  Tie a string or thread onto the middle of a toothpick. Insert the toothpick into the center of the egg until the string is in the middle of the egg.  Pull the string to cut the egg into a zig-zag pattern.

Place the chicken on a serving dish and garnish with 1"-2" slivered strips of green onion and hard boiled egg halves.  Drizzle a little of the thickened (by boiling down) sauce all over.   Serve with remaining sauce in a small pitcher.