Cantonese · Main

Bo Jai Fan (Claypot Rice with Lap Cheong)

Intermediate
25 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost

umami-deep · briny · aromatic · smoky Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, a briny, maritime salinity, on a drift of smoke.

Ingredients

300 g jasmine rice
360 ml water
2 lap cheong (Chinese cured sausage), sliced 3 mm on the angle
300 g boneless chicken thigh, in 3 cm pieces
15 ml oyster sauce
10 ml light soy sauce, for the chicken
8 g cornflour
10 ml Shaoxing wine
10 g ginger, shredded
3 g ground white pepper
45 ml groundnut oil
2 heads choy sum, blanched
45 ml light soy sauce, for the sauce
15 ml dark soy sauce
20 g rock sugar
45 ml water, for the sauce
2 spring onions, shredded

The skills inside

Sugar stages & caramel Blanching & shocking Marinating: acid, salt and time

The words inside

Lap Cheong & the Chinese Cured Pantry

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · peanuts · shellfish · molluscs · soy · alcohol

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Rinse the rice until the water runs almost clear and soak it 30 minutes; meanwhile marinate the chicken in the oyster sauce, light soy, cornflour, wine, ginger and pepper, and simmer the sauce ingredients until the rock sugar dissolves. 30 min
Drain the rice, bring it to a boil with the 360 ml water in an oiled clay pot, uncovered, until craters open across the surface and the free water has gone.
Lay the chicken and lap cheong over the rice, cover and cook on the lowest flame for 12 minutes: the sausage fat should render down through the grains and the pot should smell of caramel, never of smoke. 12 min
Drizzle 30 ml of oil down the inside wall of the pot, raise to a medium flame and rotate the pot a quarter turn every 45 seconds for 3 minutes, listening for a steady crackle rather than a hiss. 3 min
Rest off the heat 5 minutes, lay the choy sum on top, pour the sauce over and cut straight down to the base with a spoon: the fan jiu crust should lift away in deep amber sheets you can hear. 5 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes

Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.

Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.

Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes

Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.

Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.

At the Table

The Pour: Riesling or Grenache
Also Right: Cru Beaujolais
From the Taps: Farmhouse saison
Zero-Proof: Cloudy apple juice, chilled

Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.

Family notes

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Film school

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