Have you ordered a bucket of fried chicken, ate a bunch for a meal, and still have plenty leftover, but you do not want to have it for dinner again?

So you make easy peasy, foolproof chicken rice with it!

I stumbled upon this Japanese hack recipe and had to try it. The brilliant hack recipe has just four ingredients: fried chicken, rice, chicken stock and light soy sauce. I added a bit more to mine for just a tad more flavour.

For more flavour, I added sesame oil, black pepper and minced garlic and ginger. The resulting flavour tasted close to Hainanese Chicken Rice, which is a favourite in my books.

I used stock from a chicken bouillon cube, which has salt in it. Therefore I was a lot stingy with my light soy sauce. If using unsalted chicken stock, add more light soy sauce to season.

What type and part of fried chicken to use?

The original recipe uses fried chicken from KFC, but any fried chicken will do. I’ve made variations of this with Popeye’s fried chicken. The idea is to have the fried chicken flavour the rice. The Japanese recipe uses the ‘original’ flavour, but I used the ‘hot and crispy’ flavour, because that’s my preferred one.

I’ve attempted this recipe three times, with different parts of the chicken. I’m happy to report this worked great with thigh and breast portion.

I expected the breast portion to dry out, but in fact the chicken stock hydrated it slightly even. Thighs are tastier, but that might just be my personal preference.

Unlike the hack recipe, I removed the skin off my chicken pieces… because I want that crispy skin all to myself! I wasn’t sure why no recipes removed the crispy skin first, but I’m guessing it’s because the skin holds most of the flavours and spices.

I removed the skin off my chicken, and in fact enjoyed it a lot more – my overall rice was much less salty. Plus I have the bonus of crispy chicken skin. I went the extra trouble – which is not too much anyway – of crisping the chicken skin in the oven at 200 deg C for 10 minutes.

What rice cooker to use?

I used a Japanese rice cooker, but any rice cooker will do. There is no difference in rice to water ratio if you were to make it without the chicken.

My rice cooker came with a steaming vent, so I was able to also cook vegetables along with the rice. Having some steamed vegetables makes this meal a tiny bit less guilty :p.

What type of rice to use? How to cook Japanese rice?

I used Japanese rice in all my attempts, but no reason why this would not work with any rice you have available at home. Take note of water ratios for different types of rice. Some rice cookers have indicator lines for the amount of water needed – you can simply follow this.

For Japanese rice, the ratio is 1:1.2. That is, 20% more water than rice. For my 1 rice cooker cup, which is 180ml, it should be given 200ml of water.

Regular white rice requires a 1:1 ratio, for comparison’s sake.

It’s better to soak the Japanese rice in water first for about 30 minutes before cooking. Wash the rice under running water until the water is not cloudy.

Then drain the water as much as possible and add this to the rice cooker pot (I just wash and drain the rice in the same rice cooker pot for convenience). Add the chicken stock, swirl it into the rice, and pop this in the rice cooker. Simply let it stand for about 30 minutes, before hitting the ‘cook’ button. I find if I skip the soaking portion, then some of the rice pieces don’t cook through.

More Recipes Like This:

If you enjoy this rice cooker recipe, you might love these too: