A traditional Chinese coconut chicken soup will have a few more ingredients such as apricot kernels, which you will find in Chinese shops. This is a simplified recipe with only the basic ingredients: chicken and coconut. I use a small whole chicken in it, with two fresh coconuts and all the chunks and water. The soup does smell super coconutty and taste very rich with chicken flavours. As long as you don’t move the chicken too much during cooking, it should stay in shape but will fall apart very easily.

You can either buy pre-cut coconut slices or a whole coconut and cut it yourself. I’ve tried the oven method I found online, baking it until it cracks, but I baked it for a long time it still didn’t open. So I tried a less gentle way, to hit it a couple of times with a hammer and the whole coconut fell apart.

Ingredients

2 small coconuts
1 small whole chicken
2 slices of ginger
A handful of goji berries, rinsed

Method

1. Make a small hole at the top of the coconut, let all the coconut water out into a bowl and set aside.
2. Break the coconut and take all the flesh out.
3. Put the whole chicken in a pot and add enough water to submerge the chicken. Bring to a boil on medium-high heat for 5 minutes.
4. Remove the chicken from the pot and rinse off excess fat. Rinse the pot as well before the next step.
5. Put chicken, coconut flesh and ginger back in the pot, add about 2 litres of water. Bring to the boil on high heat and keep it boiling for 15 minutes. Reduce to simmer and cook for 3 hours.
6. In the last 15 minutes, add the goji berries and coconut water.
7. Skim excess fat and season with salt, then serve.

What do you think about this recipe? Share with me in the comments below 🙂

Janice xx

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