Tea Smoked Chicken 茶叶熏鸡

I’ve been eyeing this tea smoked chicken long long time ago and have yet decided which is the best method to prepare this special dish. Tea smoked chicken is quite popular in China & Taiwan, and red tea leaf for instant long jing, tie guan ying, Oolong are most commonly used on this recipe. Click to check on tea leaf. The word “smoked” already very challenging when you don’t have such particular tooling. After scrolling through some Chinese site, finally, I came to my final decision. And here’s what I did. Please read on for more.

Ingredients  :
1 whole free range chicken (round 1.3kg)
1 TB   salt
2 tspn   sichuan pepper

First step
Toast 1 tablespoon salt together with 2 tspn of sichuan pepper till fragrant then leave cool.
Pound to break the peppers and marinade salt & sichuan pepper to the chicken, leave  over night.
The next morning leave chicken to cool at room temperature then steam for 20 minutes over high heat.
Once its done, leave to cool.

Ingredients for tea smoked :
1/2 cup  rice
1/2 cup  brown sugar + 1 TB sugar
1/2 cup  dried tea leaves
1 TB  salt
2  large aluminium sheet

Second Step
Bind 2 sheet of aluminium to form one large sheet then fold into half. Sealed one side of the sheet.
Now,  spread rice, sugar, salt & tea leave over the bottom of the sheet as shown in picture.

Next, place a steel rack over the rice & sugar mixture, and then leave steamed chicken on the rack.

Finally,  seal all edges of the sheet and making sure there’s no leakage.

This is how the smoked infuse parcel looks like after sealed.
Next, baked the parcel over preheated oven at 210′C for 20-30 minutes.
Once its done, transfer chicken to a serving plate and serve.
The chicken should look very moist at this stage but I prefer crispy skin, so what I did is to bake the chicken for another 15 minutes at 220′C, with an open sheet.

It actually works pretty good. I personally prefer using an oven than wok for such kind of preparation. Less messy!  The chicken really unique with the tea infused flavour plus crispy skin. Double goodness I should say ! Hope you guys will love it too.