Hainanese chicken rice
Rice and chicken dish originating from Hainan island
Hainanese chicken rice is a dish of poached or roasted chicken with seasoned rice, served with chilli sauce and usually with cucumbers, tomato slices or cilantro garnishes. It was created by immigrants from Hainan in southern China and adapted from the Hainanese dishes of Wenchang chicken and Wenchang chicken rice.
The dish can be found throughout Southeast Asia where Hainanese people settled, particularly in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, where it remains a culinary staple. It is widely considered one of the national dishes of Singapore, and is commonly associated with Singaporean cuisine, being widely available in most food courts and hawker centres around the country.
History
Hainanese chicken rice is a dish adapted from early Chinese immigrants originally from Hainan province in southern China. It is based on a well-known Hainanese dish called Wenchang chicken, which is one of four important Hainan dishes dating to the Qing dynasty. The original dish was adapted by the Hainanese overseas Chinese population in the Nanyang area (present-day Southeast Asia). The Hainanese in China traditionally used a specific breed, the Wenchang chicken, to make the dish. They would usually cook rice with the leftover chicken stock to create a dish known as "Wenchang chicken rice" (文昌鸡饭). Wenchang chicken rice remained a dish for special occasions in Hainanese homes in Singapore until the 1940s.
“Hainanese chicken rice” enters the record as rice and chicken dish originating from Hainan island. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hainanese, chicken and rice can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hainanese chicken rice” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.