Hi!

I really loved khao mun kai when I was in Chiang Mai. I ate it nearly every morning on carrefour!

But I wonder how do they make it? I have seen several recipe but they are so different. Some recipe says to boil chicken with water, and other says to boil with ginger and garlic..

boil the chicken with water;

after the chicken is cooked, soak the chicken in cold water

use the water (after boiling the chicken) for cooking the rice; adding some garlic and ginger

try and get a recipe for the sauce that goes with chicken rice; the local version is yucks

original version of the sauce is ginger, garlic and chillies; No soya beans please

Isn't there any flavoring in the water when you boil the chicken?

It's best to boil the chicken in chicken stock (made with real chicken, not from a stock cube). No need to add additional herbs or spices (apart, perhaps, for a little salt if the stock isn't salty enough already) - the simple purity of the taste of the chicken is one of the attractions of this dish.

Some people when cooking the rice stir-fry it in chicken fat before adding the stock. (The "man" part of the name means "fat", and is an important part of the dish.) Anyway, when adding the stock to cook the rice, made sure you get lots of the fat from the top of the stock.

The sauce is the difficult part. Lots of vendors simply buy a commercial-prepared yellow bean sauce and serve it. However, a carefully crafted, more complex sauce is definitely preferable in my book.

Not Khao Mun Gai but Hainan Chicken which came before it.

I was taught on a cooking course in Australia with a well known chinese cook that the secret is to boil the chicken slowly in good stock. Lift the chicken out of the stock a couple of times wheile cooking and let the stock drain back so the stock in the chicken is changed too. When cooked turn off the heat and leave in the stock to cool. It should be squishy not hard.

Isn't there any flavoring in the water when you boil the chicken?

A dash of salt if you prefer; reduce heat after the water starts to boil

the flavour of the soup partly comes from the fat under the skin