Homemade Beggar's Chicken Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Why is it called beggars chicken? ›

Beggar's Chicken used to be a dish for the poor. Legend has it that the dish was invented when a beggar stole a chicken. Because he had no pot to cook it in, the beggar supposedly wrapped the chicken in lotus leaves and packed it in mud before lighting a fire in the ground and burying it.

In Chinese, Beggar's Chicken is called “叫化鸡” (Jiào huā jī).

Beggar's Chicken is a simple but absolutely delicious recipe that poaches chicken in a flavour soy based sauce as well as coriander, garlic and star anise. With a delicious Thai flavour to it it's a great recipe to use up a whole chicken and give it an Asian flavour.

Lobsters were considered the “poor man's chicken” and primarily used for fertilizer or fed to prisoners and slaves.

In one, a beggar stole a chicken from a farm but having no pot or utensils, he wrapped the bird in lotus leaves and packed clay or mud around it, set it in a hole where he had lit a fire, and buried it. When he dug up the chicken and cracked open the clay, he found the meat was tender and aromatic.

KFC is called 肯德基 (kěn dé jī) in Chinese, which is a transliteration of the brand's English name. The Chinese characters used in the name also have phonetic significance. The first character, 肯 (kěn), sounds similar to the first syllable of “Kentucky,” where KFC was originally founded.

The use of the word Chicken (雞) is because it's a joke. 雞 in it of itself can be an insult because in Cantonese slang it means "Prostitute." But 雞 has somewhat been been used loosely in humorous situations. It's sort of like saying "silly goose".

Yellow-hair chicken, also called yellow-feather chicken (Chinese: 黃毛雞; pinyin: huángmáo jī; Cantonese Yale: wòhng mouh gāai), is a breed of chicken traditionally raised for meat in China. It takes about 120 days to grow to market size compared to as little as 41 days for specially-bred broiler chickens.

Today the poulet de Bresse has the reputation of being the best quality table chicken in the world.

The poulet de Bresse or Bresse chicken is claimed to be one of the world's most expensive chickens.

Why is Chinese chicken so juicy? ›

“It might seem counterintuitive to marinate before boiling, but the velveting marinade tenderizes the meat, keeps it moist, and adds flavor. The meat ends up juicy and flavorful, a result you don't get with a standard blanching process.”

If you're baking it, keep it covered with a baking sheet or with the pan-top for about 80% of the total baking time, uncover it only when the breast is cooked and tender but there's juices in the pan. Once uncovered, the juices will evaporate quickly in the oven, and you'll have a juicy chicken breast to eat.

Brine. Like a marinade, a brine helps chicken breast soak up as much moisture as possible before cooking. It only requires three ingredients: water, salt, and a pinch of sugar.

“Before we had factory farming people didn't really buy chicken unless it's a really special occasion, Christmas and things like that. So chicken was really expensive, really special and so people made mock versions of it.”

Barnyard chickens are fowl that have long been noted for timidity, and the name chicken has been applied to human cowards since the 17th century. Poltroon has been used for wimps and cravens for even longer, since the early 16th century at least.

Note: Some people incorrectly believe that 'chicken' is the plural form of chick, as oxen is to ox. This is not the case - The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon word cicen, for which the plural is cicen-u. "Chick" is simply a contraction of chicken.

Article Series. Most scientists agree that the Southeast Asian Red Junglefowl (gallus gallus) is the primary wild ancestor of chickens.