Recipe: Nail This Cantonese Soy Sauce Chicken With Just a Few Pantry Staples

Hong Kong is a food lovers’ paradise. It offers an enormous range of dishes and places to eat them – from the all-day cha chaan tengs (cafes where Western ingredients meet Cantonese sensibilities) to Michelin-starred fine diners.

If anyone knows the city’s specialties (and where to find them), it’s ArChan Chan. The chef grew up in Hong Kong before moving to Australia to start her cooking career – she worked at some of Melbourne’s best-loved restaurants, including Andrew McConnell’s Cutler, Supernormal and now-closed Ricky & Pinky. (She now works as head chef at Hong Kong’s Ho Lee Fook).

In this extract from her cookbook, A Day in Hong Kong, she perfects a Hong Kong classic: soy sauce chicken. The chicken is tender, the skin silky, and the broth richly savoury, thanks to a carefully layered soy sauce base. The recipe leans on tau chau – a first-press soy sauce prized for its depth and intensity. “This soy sauce is rare and expensive,” writes Chan. “Here, I use a mixture of light and dark soy sauce, but feel free to use tau chau if you can get your hands on some.” Serve it at room temperature, finished with a hot pour of gingery soy broth and plain rice.

Soy sauce chicken

Serves 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes (plus 1 hour soaking time)
Cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients

100 g fine sea salt
1.2kg chicken wings, well washed
2 L iced water
20g yellow rock sugar
1 tbsp rosé wine
Shredded spring onion greens, to serve

Soy sauce stock
750ml light soy sauce
150g yellow rock sugar
125ml rosé wine
3 tbsp dark soy sauce
10 red shallots, peeled
10 slices ginger
5 spring onions, sliced into batons

Method

Dissolve the salt in 2 litres of water. Add the chicken wings and soak for 1 hour. Drain and pat dry with paper towel.

In a medium saucepan, bring 2 litres of water to the boil. Prepare the iced water in a similar-sized container.

Put the wings in the boiling water for 1 minute, then transfer straight into the iced water for 5 minutes. Drain. This step tightens the skin.

Combine all ingredients for the soy sauce stock with 750 ml of water in a medium wok or saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring until the rock sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes.

Turn heat high, add the wings, bring to the boil, then turn off heat. Let wings sit in the stock for 10 minutes.

Turn heat to medium for 1–2 minutes until steaming, then turn off heat. Let wings sit in the stock for another 10 minutes.

Drain wings, reserving stock liquid and shallot, ginger, and spring onion. Place wings on a tray and cool to room temperature.

Pour 250 ml (1 cup) of reserved stock into a small saucepan with reserved shallot, ginger, and spring onion. Bring to a simmer. Add rock sugar and stir until dissolved, then pour in wine and turn off heat.

Serve chicken wings topped with the hot soy stock and shredded spring onion.

This is an edited extract of A Day in Hong Kong by ArChan Chan, published by Smith Street Books in 2024. Photography by Alana Dimou.

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