Herbal Wrapped Chicken

Inspiration - Oh well, it was few days before CNY in Feb 2008 and I was feeling particularly festive and wanted to impress my mom with a Chinese infused dish for dinner. As usual she was like....don't mess up the kitchen!! I said, don't worry you will be impressed with me. Actually I was at Soos's house during her hse warming and she made this and I was really impressed and have been meaning to try it since. So, this is the special pack of ingredient. What a name - Golden Phoenix Herbal Wrapped Chicken!

Simple Steps :-

1) Get one whole chicken and also some ingredients that u want to stuff into the chicken (I decided to use some red dates, mushroom, onion and mandarin orange) hmmm...why mandarin orange, well the instructions required an orange (probably due to the Golden Phoenix theme) and so I improvise with mandarin orange since it was CNY and I had loads of them at home.

2) Open the packet, you will find the packet of spices and another packet containing an aluminium foil and plastic wrapper. Place chicken on top of plastic wrapper with the aluminium foil under.

3) Pour the packet of ingredients onto chicken and massage on whole of chicken including the stomach. Put the mushroom, dates and onion and peeled mandarin orange into stomach.

4) Wrapped whole chicken tightly. Ensure that there is no gap to prevent juice from spilling. Fold with aluminium foil and put on plate on top of boiling water to steam.

5) Steam for 2-3 hours (depending size of chic). Check occasionally to ensure steamer has enough water. Voila! Ready to eat. Yum Yum!

Simple ingredients -

1) 1 packet of Herbal chicken spices

2) 1 whole chicken

3) Red dates, mushroom, onion, orange (in the above I used mandarin orange)

Verdict - I think the mandarin orange was a mistake. It turned out a bit bitter...how silly of me, I should have realized it. Should have used an orange as instructed. There are other packet ingredients that may not require orange eg Emperor Wrapped Herbal Chicken.