Soy Sauce Chicken Noodles

Soy Sauce Chicken Noodles are not as common in Singapore as the other types of noodles such as fishball or minced meat noodles.

One reason could be because the preparation is much more difficult, as it requires the chef to braise the chicken in rich soy sauce for an extended period of time (typically hours). The chicken is typically very dark in colour as a result of the braising process, but a well braised chicken would be so infused with unami flavour that you can taste the sauce with every bite of the meat.

The chicken is typically paired with thin noodles. The dish is served dry and tossed with the leftover sauce from braising the chicken. The sauce, which would have been infused with the essence of chicken oil, is the perfect condiment with the otherwise tasteless noodles.

Soy sauce chicken stalls typically sell both rice and noodles, but you do find on occasion, a stall that only sells one or the other. These are the true artisans that wanted to focus on doing one kind of dish very well.

A perfect soy sauce chicken noodle would have the following key characteristics:

The sauce that clings well to the noodles, but should not be starchy. It can be a bit oily, but not to the point of being overwhelmingly greasy.

The noodle, cooked al dente, must pair well with the sauce. For sauce and noodle to cling to each other, the noodle must play its part too! The noodles cannot be overcooked, and should retain a bit of springiness even when cooked through.

The chicken is of cause the highlight of this dish. Being a Singaporean dish, it needs to be done as well, if not better, than the Singapore staple, the Singapore Hainanese Chicken. As such, one must be able to taste the fragrance of the sauce deep in the chicken itself, yet it should not be overcooked to the point that the chicken becomes dry. A good soy sauce chicken is quite oily. Health conscious eaters typically remove the skin, but for the foodie, this is akin to committing sacrilege. After all, the most fragrant part of the chicken would be the part that is exposed the longest to the sauce.

A stalk of vegetable (kailan or caixin) is usually put on the side of the dish, to provide fibre. It helps to clear the oiliness of the dish, though the dish is usually finished too so quickly for one to notice the grease! 

For health reasons, it's not something that I would recommend to eat every day, or even every week. All for the better, as it will make that occasional indulgence to make the taste all the more memorable.