Howard’s

Steeped Chicken

“You can’t overcook this chicken, even if you forget about it on the stove,” said Howard Wong. “It’s foolproof.”

Raised in Boston’s Chinatown in a family of restaurant workers, Howard was (much to his delight) immersed in food at an early age. His mother made this dish at least once a week; he recalls frequent trips to the local chicken store, where his mother would purchase freshly butchered poultry to cook for dinner that same day. Howard described his memories in such lucid detail—the smell of the shop on a sticky-hot day, the texture of a salt-cleaned bird, the sounds of the bubbling pot of water, the first bite of that satiny-smooth, ginger-scented meat…he spoke of it all with the fondest smile.

With every reappearance of this dish throughout the years, whether as a child oblivious to the labor of cooking or as a novice teenage cook just beginning to appreciate these efforts, Howard came to associate its taste with home. With family. With memories of sleepy, blissful childhood days, when all was simple and all was well.

“I’ve had it my whole life,” he told me. “It reminds me of my mom.”

Now, Howard regularly prepares steeped chicken for his own family, and he has taught his two sons to cook this beloved childhood dish as well. But its main ingredient comes in a slightly different form now—not warm from a cage or a chopping block, but cold from the fridges of a grocery store near Howard’s house. He reflected, “It tastes similar, but not quite the same.”

“There’s nothing quite like it.”

INGREDIENTS

One chicken, whole (innards removed+cleaned)

One fist-sized hunk of ginger, sliced

Salt (for boiling water)

Oyster sauce OR

Ginger-scallion sauce (recipe linked HERE)

let’s cook!