COPPERWhat is the national dish of Singapore?
Singapore has no officially declared national dish, but Hainanese chicken rice is the one most often named: chicken poached below a simmer, plunged into ice water, and served with rice cooked in chicken fat and stock, chilli sauce and cucumber. Chilli crab is the other common answer, and Hokkien mee is sometimes listed too. All three are hawker centre staples.
Why there is more than one answer
Food is central to Singapore's national identity, and its cooking mixes Chinese, Malay and Indian traditions. No law names a national dish, so lists give several. Hainanese chicken rice is the one described as "widely considered" the national dish; chilli crab and Hokkien mee also appear.
What they share is the hawker centre, where most of them are eaten.
What is Hainanese chicken rice?
It is a plate in four parts:
- The chicken: poached whole in water that barely trembles, then dipped in ice so the skin sets into a thin jelly.
- The rice: washed jasmine rice fried in rendered chicken fat with garlic, then cooked in the poaching stock with pandan leaves. In Singapore, the rice is said to matter more than the chicken.
- The chilli sauce: red chillies, ginger and garlic pounded with lime juice and a little stock.
- The extras: sliced cucumber, a soy and sesame dressing over the chicken, and a bowl of hot stock.
How Hainanese chicken rice is made
The cooking is gentle. A 1.6 kg chicken goes into boiling water, the heat drops so the water barely moves, and it poaches 20 minutes, then steeps off the heat, covered, for 40 to 45 minutes. Twenty minutes in ice water follow.
Meanwhile the fat pulled from the cavity is rendered, garlic fried in it and the rice stirred until every grain is coated, then cooked in the stock with knotted pandan for 11 to 12 minutes. Our Hainanese chicken rice recipe gives every quantity.
Where chicken rice comes from
The dish was created by immigrants from Hainan, in southern China, adapting Wenchang chicken, a dish from their home province. In Singapore, Wenchang chicken rice stayed a special-occasion dish in Hainanese homes until the 1940s.
The first chicken rice restaurants opened during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War, when Hainanese cooks working for British households lost their jobs. Moh Lee Twee's Swee Kee restaurant, open from 1947 to 1997, popularised the dish in the 1950s.
Malaysia also claims the dish, a dispute that goes back to the two countries' split in 1965. Read more in the national dish of Malaysia; in Thailand the same dish is known as khao man kai.
Hawker centres, where the national dishes live
Hawker stalls first appeared in Singapore around the mid-19th century, as street vendors with pushcarts or bicycles selling cheap, fast food to labourers and office workers. From the 1960s the government moved them into permanent hawker centres and wet markets to fix hygiene problems.
Today a hawker centre groups dozens of stalls, each with its own speciality, and Singaporeans eat there more often than in restaurants. Chicken rice, chilli crab, laksa, fish head curry and kaya toast are all hawker or coffee-shop dishes.
That culture now has international recognition:
- UNESCO: Singapore's hawker culture was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 16 December 2020.
- Michelin: in 2016 a hawker stall selling soya sauce chicken rice and noodles became one of the first two street food stalls in the world to receive a Michelin star.
- CNN: in a 2011 readers' poll of the world's 50 most delicious foods, Hainanese chicken rice ranked 13th and chilli crab 29th.
Other dishes to know from Singapore
Chilli crab is the other national favourite: mud crab stir-fried in a sweet, savoury tomato and chilli sauce thickened with ribbons of egg, eaten with fried or steamed mantou buns. In the 1950s Cher Yam Tian began cooking crabs caught by her husband with tomato sauce and chilli; they sold it from a pushcart by the Kallang River from 1956. In the 1960s chef Hooi Kok Wai developed the modern sauce, with sambal, vinegar, lemon juice and egg.
Bak kut teh is a pork rib soup. Singapore favours the Teochew style, light in colour and peppery with plenty of garlic, rather than the dark herbal Hokkien style common in Malaysia. The Teochew version was sold along the Singapore River, around Clarke Quay and River Valley, after the Second World War. It comes with youtiao to dip in the broth, dark soy sauce with chilli padi, and tea.
All three recipes are on our page about the food of Singapore, and the neighbouring kitchens are in our guide to Southeast Asian food.
The recipes
- Hainanese chicken rice🇸🇬 Singapore · 2 hours
Chilli crab🇸🇬 Singapore · 1 hour and 50 minutes
Bak kut teh🇸🇬 Singapore · 2 hours and 10 minutes
Questions people ask
Is Hainanese chicken rice from Singapore or Malaysia?
It was created by Hainanese immigrants in Southeast Asia from a dish of Hainan, China, and both Singapore and Malaysia claim it. In Singapore it is widely considered a national dish.
Is chilli crab the national dish of Singapore?
Chilli crab is one of the dishes most often named, alongside Hainanese chicken rice, but neither has official status. The modern dish was developed in Singapore in the 1950s.
Why is the rice in chicken rice so flavourful?
It is fried in rendered chicken fat with garlic, then cooked in the chicken's poaching stock with ginger and pandan leaves, which is why it is sometimes called oily rice.
What is served with Hainanese chicken rice?
Chilli sauce made with chilli, ginger, garlic and lime, sliced cucumber, a soy-based dressing and often a bowl of the chicken stock.
Where can you eat chicken rice in Singapore?
Almost everywhere: it is a fixture of hawker centres and food courts across the country, and is also served in restaurants and hotels.
Keep reading
- Traditional food of Singapore: 13 dishes to know
- What is the national dish of Brunei?
- What is the national dish of Cambodia?
- What is the national dish of Indonesia?
- What is the national dish of Laos?
- What is the national dish of Malaysia?