🍗 Beggar's chicken

Name: Beggar's chicken
Total time: 240 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: China · Hangzhou, Zhejiang
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken, about 1.5 kg; 3 tbsp soy sauce; 40 g ginger, sliced, and 4 scallions, cut in lengths; 1 tsp sugar, ½ tsp five-spice powder, salt; 2–3 dried lotus leaves, soaked in hot water until soft; Crust: 800 g plain flour mixed with about 450 ml water, or food-safe baking clay; Baking paper

Origin: China · Hangzhou, Zhejiang

495kcal

per serving · 300 g

165kcal

per 100 g

57 gProtein19 g / 100 g

27 gFat9 g / 100 g

6 gCarbs2 g / 100 g

Beggar's chicken is a whole chicken seasoned with ginger, scallion and soy sauce, wrapped in fragrant lotus leaves and sealed in a thick crust — traditionally clay, today often a flour-and-water dough — then baked slowly for hours. The crust is cracked open at the table, releasing an aromatic steam, and the meat is so tender it falls from the bone, perfumed by the lotus leaf.

Diets

✓

No porkfor halal, the meat must be halal-slaughtered

✓

Dairy-freeno milk, cheese, butter or yogurt in a typical recipe

✓

Keto-friendly2 g carbs per 100 g

✓

High protein19 g protein per 100 g — 46% of the calories

Not vegetarianbecause of: whole chicken

Not veganbecause of: whole chicken

Contains glutenbecause of: soy sauce

Allergens

Contains (in a typical recipe):

⚠ Gluten ⚠ Soy

What it is made of

whole chickenlotus leafedible claygingerscallionsoy sauce

Recipe

4 servings240 min

Ingredients

1 whole chicken, about 1.5 kg
3 tbsp soy sauce
40 g ginger, sliced, and 4 scallions, cut in lengths
1 tsp sugar, ½ tsp five-spice powder, salt
2–3 dried lotus leaves, soaked in hot water until soft
Crust: 800 g plain flour mixed with about 450 ml water, or food-safe baking clay
Baking paper

Method

Rub the chicken inside and out with the soy sauce, sugar, five-spice and a little salt. Stuff the cavity with the ginger and scallions and leave for 1 hour.
Wrap the chicken tightly in the softened lotus leaves, then in a layer of baking paper.
Knead the flour and water into a stiff dough, roll it out about 1 cm thick and seal the wrapped chicken completely inside.
Bake at 200 °C for 30 minutes, then lower to 160 °C and bake for 2½–3 hours more.
At the table, crack the crust with a mallet, discard it, open the leaves and serve the chicken in pieces with its juices.

How to make it lighter

Remove the skin before eating — most of the chicken fat sits in and under it.
The crust is only a cooking vessel: do not eat it.
Serve with steamed greens and a modest portion of rice to round out a lighter meal.

History

The story goes that a hungry beggar in the Hangzhou area, with no pot or oven, wrapped a chicken in leaves and mud and baked it in a fire, and that the method later reached the tables of the wealthy. The legend cannot be verified, but the dish, known in Chinese as jiaohua ji, is today a famous speciality of Hangzhou restaurants in Zhejiang province.

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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →