We've made chicken rice rice at home three times using traditional methods of using chicken fat and stock from making the chicken, and can appreciate that the most difficult part of making chicken rice is not getting the chicken right, but the rice. Well, maybe the chili is even harder but we didn't try to make that.
I thought that there has to be an easier way of making good chicken rice, and decided to experiment with making chicken rice rice without the chicken. The magic ingredient, of course, is chicken stock powder. For convenience and easier replicability (due to less variation) I also decided to use garlic powder instead of fresh garlic and fried shallots instead of fresh shallots (fried onions probably will be a serviceable substitute).
Attempt 1:
1 cup rice
Water as indicated
1 teaspoon Knorr chicken stock powder (the tub indication is to use 1 teaspoon per 250ml of water)
~1.5 teaspoons fried shallots (it's bulky so it's hard to measure exactly)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1.5 teaspoons oil
I didn't have ginger in the house this day, unfortunately
Stir and cook in the rice cooker.
This was pretty fragrant and moist enough, but needed more salt and intensity of chicken flavor.
Attempt 2:
1 cup rice
2.5 teaspoons Knorr chicken stock powder
2 teaspoons fried shallots
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Just over 2.5 teaspoons oil
1.25 teaspoons minced ginger
2 frozen pandan leaves tied into one knot per leaf
Water as indicated
Stir and cook in the rice cooker.
The brown bits at the top are the fried shallots, not something burnt.
This was good - fragrant and moist (if slightly mushy, but that might be because I didn't eat it the moment the rice cooker was done). The chicken taste could still be better, but I think it's the best you can get without using real chicken. In fact, it's better than one or two of the attempts using real chicken.
