The Ultimate Thai Chicken Rice Recipe (วิธีทำข้าวมันไก่) & Street Food Documentary

Are you ready to make this Thai chicken rice recipe (วิธีทำข้าวมันไก่) yourself? Get more details and instructions here:

Khao man gai (ข้าวมันไก่), is the Thai version of the widely popular Hainanese chicken rice dish, available around Southeast Asia. In Thailand, it’s usually considered a street food dish, and in Bangkok you can’t walk more than a few feet without noticing the next chicken rice street food vendor. There are a couple of parts to any plate of khao man gai (ข้าวมันไก่), boiled chicken, rice cooked with chicken broth, chicken soup, and finally the sauce.

In this Thai street food adventure and chicken rice recipe, I also decided to include an extra part, serving the dish exactly the way you’ll find it when you’re in Thailand. This is not only a recipe, but a full food adventure, from start to finish. So keep watching this video all the way to the end, and join me on this epic food journey for the Thai style of Hainanese chicken rice.

Ok, so the first part of this khao man gai recipe (วิธีทำข้าวมันไก่) is to go to the market or the supermarket and buy yourself some chicken. I just went to the local market, bought 4 chickens and brought them home. I’m not sure exactly how you’ll be able to buy your chickens, but in Thailand I bought them with their heads on and the organs in-tact. So the first thing I had to do was wash and rinse the chicken, and then take out the organs. You want to be a bit careful, and try to make sure nothing breaks when you’re fishing them out, because that could cause the chicken to get bitter. Anyway, once you’ve done that, just wash out the chicken again, and it’s time to boil the chickens. You want to boil the chicken for probably about 35 - 45 minutes, my 4 chickens took about 45 minutes. The Hainanese chicken rice recipe usually says to plunge the chickens into ice water after they are finished boiling, but in Thailand, this is usually not the case, and the chickens are usually just left to sit and cool down.

Next part of this street food recipe is the rice. First you need to deep fry a bunch of garlic in either chicken oil or vegetable oil, rinse your uncooked rice, and then put the fried garlic into the rice. Instead of using water to cook the rice, we’ll be using the fresh chicken broth. Then just cook your rice normally in the rice cooker. The Thai version of chicken rice sauce is a little different from the Singapore and Chinese version. It’s heavy on ginger and chilies, and made with fermented soy bean sauce. Take all the ingredients and then just blend them up, bring it to a boil, and your khao man gai sauce is good to go. For the chicken soup, you basically just take the broth, skim off all the oil, and boil it again. You can add in as much salt and pepper to your liking, and then chop up a winter melon or daikon radish, boil it in the soup, and the final step is to toss in a handful of cilantro. These four parts of the khao man gai recipe (วิธีทำข้าวมันไก่) are ready, and the next thing to do is just assemble a Thai street food style plate.

My favorite part is putting it all together and serving it. Take a bowl of rice, put it on a plate, then slice off some chicken and cut it into strips. Then serve the chicken rice with a bowl of soup on the side, and sauce on the side. In this video, I then hung up the chickens on my food cart, and headed over to our friends house to serve them the dish. It was quite a lot of fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed serving khao man gai!

If you check out the full recipe here I’ve included two versions of it - the first is for the exactly proportions and amounts of ingredients that I used in this giant 4 chicken sized recipe. But I also included another recipe (written in the box), where I reduced the ingredients to just 1 chicken - so that if you’re not cooking for a whole party, you can still make this recipe for a smaller group. However, if you want to do 4 chickens, I think you should!

Again, for all the directions for the recipes, go here:

The music in this video is all from AudioNetwork.com

Support us (make a donation):

I’m Mark Wiens, an eater at: &
Thai recipes:
Premium guides:
Don’t forget to subscibe for more food adventures:

Thank you very much for watching this khao man gai (Thai chicken rice) street food adventure. Hope you enjoyed it.