Ginger Soya Sauce Chicken

In my younger days, during Chinese New Year, my grandmother would boil a whole chicken.  The cooked chicken would be placed on the altar.  The stock from boiling it would be used to cook chicken rice.  After prayers, the chicken would be cut up to be eaten with the chicken rice. Leftover chicken would be used to fry Ginger Soya Sauce Chicken for dinner. 

I discovered from this video that the Thais have the same tradition as we Chinese have.  This is a Thai version of Ginger Soy Chicken ไก่เค็ม (gai kem).

These are the ingredients required:

I do not follow this tradition during Chinese New Year but I often cook this dish.  Since I boil soup almost on a daily basis, I usually steam dishes to cook or heat leftovers over the pot of soup I am boiling. So, if I need cooked chicken to make this dish, I will place my raw cut up chicken in a bowl and steam it over, for example, my ABC Soup. After steaming, the liquid that had dripped into the bowl of chicken can be used instead of water to flavour the dish.  I can also sieved it into the ABC soup to enhance its flavour even though I have already added pork soup bone to boil it.

If I want to cook this dish on days when I will be boiling herbal or lotus root soup, I will boil water with at least three to four drumsticks, cut into 4 sections, and some pork soup bones or chicken ribs.  Once the water is boiling for about 10 to 20 minutes, I will remove the drumstick to cook this dish.  This is to prevent the herbal or lotus root soup from affecting the flavour of the chicken.  I prefer to sieve the soup stock into another pot to boil with the rest of the ingredients for the soup I am making.  In that way, there will not be any scums in the soup.  

This is my Malaysian version of Ginger Soya Chicken.

I usually cook my Ginger Soya Chicken with more sauce so I can use the it to heat up leftover rice.  Try it.  You will discover it taste like claypot rice.  As this is a dish we enjoy eating, I always try to stock in the freezer, julienned ginger soaked in garlic oil.  Storing ginger this way will keep it fresh and prevent spoilage.  You can learn how to julienne ginger by watching this video.

On days when I have forgotten to take the frozen chicken out to thaw overnight in the fridge, I will speed up the cooking process by airfrying it.  I will use the setting on my airfryer for cooking chicken and turn it over half way through the process to continue cooking.  By then the chicken would have thawed good enough.  It does not matter that the chicken is not fully cooked since I will be cooking it with the sauce.