This is a well known nutritious Korean dish that you can easily make at home. It is a chicken stuffed with glutinous rice soup, seasoned with salt, and spiced with dates, ginseng, garlic and onions. Normally I would cook this over a stove, but today I am kind of lazy, and decided to use the “soup” function on my rice cooker. Oh wow! Would you believe how easy it is to cook this way? Just put everything in , press a button and voila! A hearty chicken meal in less than an hour.

Ingredients

• 900g -1 kg whole chicken
• 3/4 cup of glutinous rice washed and soaked in water for an hour
• 2 bulbs of garlic (minced)
• 4 ginseng root (washed) – my ginseng are a little small, just use 1 if your ginseng is big
• 1 medium size yellow onion (sliced)
• 6 pieces of dried red dates (washed)
• 3 honey dates (optional) – see note
• 1.7 Liter water
• Salt to taste

Note : It is not really common to add honey dates, but I prefer the sweetness of this kind of dates to chicken soup, so adding it is up to preference

Method

• Clean the chicken and its cavity under running water. Remove any innards/giblets that you may find inside.
• put the chicken on your chopping board and pat dry with kitchen towel
• remove any excess fat
• drain the rice, mix it with the minced garlic, 2 pieces of ginseng, 3 pieces of red dates and stuffed it into the chicken
• pour the water in
• scatter the remaining ingredients such as the red dates, honey dates ginseng and sliced yellow onion around the liquid
• Press the soup mode and wait for it to finish cooking
• Season with salt
• Serve hot

For non rice cooker mode

Do the same process except that you need to boil it at medium high heat for 20 minutes then turn down the heat to medium low. Let it simmer for another 20-30 minutes or until the meat becomes tender and glutinous rice are cooked.