Recipe: Chicken in Coconut Milk

Last week Faith's post about Jamie Oliver's Chicken in Milk got me thinking about the further possibilities of cooking a chicken in milk and I came upon the sweet pungent flavors of coconut milk and lemongrass.

Here's an adaptation of Jamie's recipe with a southeast Asian influence. I cooked it in about an hour, called a neighbor, and served it to us all Friday night with brown rice. Coconut sorbet for dessert. Delicious.

Chicken in Coconut Milk
Serves 4-6

1 3lb whole chicken
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1 tablespoon sesame oil or olive oil
1 cinnamon stick
2 whole pieces star anise
1 bunch cilantro
1 large lemon, cut into eighths
lemongrass, white part, 5" chopped into 1/4" pieces
6-8 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
1 16-oz can coconut milk
3 cups spinach leaves
2 green onions, chopped into 1/4" pieces

Rinse and dry chicken, then sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Put in refrigerator for up to 24 hours, or set aside while you prepare remaining ingredients if you're going to cook it right away.

Preheat the oven to 375° F.

You'll need a covered pot that will hold the chicken close, such as a Dutch Oven. Melt the butter over medium heat, then add the oil. Put in the chicken, breast side up and let it sizzle for about 30 second. Carefully flip the bird and cook the other side, another 30 seconds. Remove from the heat, put the chicken on a plate, and remove the fat in the pot.

Put your chicken back in the pot with the cinnamon stick, star anise, a handful chopped cilantro stems (about 1/2 cup), lemon, lemongrass, garlic and coconut milk and cook in the preheated oven for 60-90 minutes (depending on size), basting the sauce over the top of the bird every 20 minutes or so. The chicken is done when an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thigh reads 165° F.

Remove chicken and put on a plate. Pull out cinnamon stick, and any other solids you do not want to serve with the chicken. Put sauce back on the stovetop, add the spinach and heat over medium flame just until wilted.

Carve chicken and serve each piece over rice with sauce spooned over the top. Garnish with chopped scallions and cilantro leaves.

Comments (15)

I tried the original recipe but with mint leaves instead of sage. Mint & lemon made a great combo.

Oooh, this looks even more up my alley than the original! I've got to buy a chicken!

This looks amazing and simple. I have been experimenting cooking a lot of Thai food of late and love the flavor of coconut milk. However, I just found out just how much fat it contains and have been substituting the lite version in my recipes. It is very good.

Can't wait to try this!

http://dishinanddishes.blogspot.com

great idea with the coconut milk sara kate. I'll definitely try this

This one sounds yummy I will definitely be trying it soon!

I tried the Jamie Oliver recipe last week, inspired by Faith's excellent post, and I loved it. I immediately started to wonder if it would work as well with coconut milk. Is anybody else familiar with Charmaine Solomon's chicken adobo recipe from the Complete Asian Cookbook? I was thinking that would adapt perfectly to this method.

@wesaturtle: Mint sounds much better than sage. I tried it with tarragon, because that was all I had handy, and that was really delicious too.

I made this today and loved, loved the taste of the chicken. However, the sauce over the rice was too rich/fatty. I'd probably try it with fat free coconut milk next time, or serve the chicken with out sauce.

@kittyz, @dishinanddishes

don't waste your money on lite coconut milk, it's just regular coconut milk diluted with water and it costs the same as the full fat stuff. Buy the regular stuff and dilute it yourself with water or stock.

you can use the leftover milk in another recipe - coconut rice anyone? Yum yum yum...

I tried this and my sauce turned out very sour. Did anyone else have this problem?

You could easily adapt this to a stove top recipe with cut chicken pieces - sounds like a good one to try!

This was fantastic. Only change I made was I had no star anise so I used 1 tbs of chinese 5 spice on the chicken when I seared it. Also, I doubled the coconut milk because I wanted to make sure it was "soupy". It was so freaking good. We took the leftovers to work and ate it for lunch. We were so sad when it was gone! I'm actually making it again today :-)
this time I'm adding eggplant and maybe another veg.
Hey.. I just thought. I bet it's great with a bit of Sriracha.

@ellystapes, my first batch was very sour and bitter. The second time, though, I used a Meyer lemon and it made all the difference. Very tasty! Got the thumbs up from the whole family.

I just made this last night in my brand new 5.5 quart le creuset. Super easy to make, and I think I can honestly say I've never had a more tender chicken. I always have coconut milk on hand for curry but the cans are only 13 oz, so I substituted a few ounces of almond milk.

I was also missing the star anise (more like husband forgot to buy it), so I'm not sure how much that affected the flavor. Mine was also nearing on the bitter end, and I think that may have been too much lemon grass...but it was still delicious never the less. And I had leftovers for a couple lunches!

I will absolutely make this again, but use more coconut milk, the star anise that I didn't have, and a meyer lemon like the above poster noted!