Roast Chicken in Hoi Sin Sauce

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Rub chicken with melted butter. Then rub chicken both inside cavity and on skin with spice mixture comprising:

2 tbl 5-spice powder
2 tbl rotdee
1 tbl salt (should change to 1 ts)

Then coat chicken under the skin and inside with hoi sin mixture comprising:

3 tbl hoi sin sauce
1 tbl sesame oil
2 tbl oyster sauce
1 tbl honey

Fill cavity with onions, half-lemon, boiled potatoes. Usually I simply use only one large onions sliced about 1/2-inch thick.

Leave to marinade in spices for 24 hrs.

Start oven at 250 deg C, open oven, put in chicken, turn down to 200 deg C.

Roast in oven at 200 deg C for 1 hr 15 min. Test your oven first for correct roast temperature. Our Bauknet oven, for instance, gave me a perfect roast at 200 deg. C but setting my Rinnai oven at 200 deg C turned out to be too high for my first roast in the Rinnai oven.

I therefore set the temperature at 175 deg Celsius and took out the roast after 30 min when I saw the skin was browning to quickly. Roast chicken needs just the correct amount of roasting to turn out nice and juicy. Too long, as in most restaurants, see the roast done too long, so that the chicken breast become too tasteless and bland. Like Hainanese chicken rice, the chicken is done right when there is still a teeny little bit of pink in the meat!

Place the marinaded chicken on a roasting rack. This is important if you wish to get a good roast, because roasting requires hot air to circulate freely around the bird. As we did not have a proper roasting rack, we placed the chicken onto a rack placed across a dripping pan. Place 1/2-inch of water in the pan when you roast. Again this is important to get a moist, juicy roast.

Leave to cool down before carving to let juice inside chicken settle.