Three Day Project: Torihamu (Chicken ‘Ham’)

Three days. That’s how long it takes to pre­pare this dish. Not one, not two, THREE. Doesn’t that sound ridicu­lous for 2 pieces of chicken thigh meat?

Well, as ridicu­lous as it sounds, it’s all the rage in 2ch, a ginor­mous not-really under­ground bul­letin board sys­tems site in Japan. Specif­i­cally, the cook­ing boards.
You see, this dish, tori­hamu — chicken ham, lit­er­ally — is a dish born out of the inter­webs. Its mis­lead­ing name refers to the tex­ture of the fin­ished prod­uct rather than the actual mak­ing process, which, by the way, is super easy and has lots of room for cus­tomiza­tion. With all the recipe trad­ing, tri­als, and reports, the tori­hamu thread has cur­rently extended to thread #28 (that’s 27000+ posts! On chicken!!!).

Here’s a basic for­mula for tori­hamu (pro­nounced toh-ree-hah-muh):

For every piece of chicken breast/thigh:
1 tsp of honey (or sugar)
1 tsp of salt (the higher the qual­ity the bet­ter)
a pinch of spices (have fun)

1. Defrost chicken and pat dry. Rub honey all over it.
2. Then rub salt all over it. Mas­sage it in. Caress it. Make love to it.
3. Then rub in the spice. For starters, how about some freshly ground course pep­pers? Again, the higher the qual­ity, the bet­ter. It will def­i­nitely show in your end prod­uct.
4. Throw it in an air tight con­tainer. Store it in the fridge for 2 nights.
5. Take out the chicken and soak it in water for an hour. Roll it into a bur­rito and tie it all-over with cook­ing string if you want it to look more like ham.
6. Throw chicken in pot. Pour enough water to barely cover it.
7. Bring the water to a boil. Then take it off the heat and let it sit for 6–8 hours. Room temp should be fine, but if it’s toasty inside, put it in the fridge once it’s com­pletely cooled.
8. Take the chicken out. Slice, then pan fry the sucker to kill any sur­viv­ing sal­mo­nella suck­ers. Then nom.
9. DO NOT CHUCK THE GOLDEN SOUP (the water that the chicken just bathed in overnight). It makes great… soup. You should play with this too.

Easy, yes? A lot of down time, yes. But the wait makes it all the more fun.

It’s a great alter­na­tive to say, sausages and bacon in the morning.

Now that we have the basics down… Are we ready for an adven­ture? Really? Are you sure?
Okay, here goes.

Vietamese-ish Chicken Noo­dle Soup - serves 2–3

2 pieces chicken thigh
2 tsp star fruit honey syrup
2 tsp sea salt
1/2 star anise, bro­ken up
2–3 cloves
a pinch of curry powder.

1 onion — skin peeled, base and tip chopped off.
2 bunches scal­lions
1–2 sliv­ers of gin­ger
1 star anise (small, teeny tiny)
2 cloves
1–2 tbsp Viet­namese fish sauce

2 cups boiled somen or hiya­mugi noo­dles
1 egg
scal­lions
fried onions

1. Rub the star fruit honey and salt all over the chicken.
2. Take anise, cloves, and gin­ger and toast it in the toaster oven until it smells slightly burnt but in a good way. Use this as your spice mix and rub it into the chicken. Then store for two days.
3. Cook the chicken and leave it over night to soak. Take the golden soup and fil­ter it into a dif­fer­ent pot.
4. Throw onions and toasted spices in there.
5. Let it sim­mer for 1–2 hours, occa­sion­ally replace water loss.
6. Add a cou­ple dashes of fish sauce until it comes to desired salti­ness. It’ll sort of taste like chicken pho.
7. Boil an egg, soft-boiled is best. Peel shell off, split it in half, set it aside.
7. Now… In a large bowl, put in 1 cup of somen, and pour in some soup. Top with sliced tori­hamu, boiled egg half, chopped scal­lions, and fried onion pieces. And then slurp away.

Wasn’t that a lot of work for one bowl of noo­dles that you end up slurp­ing away in, say, 5 min­utes?
But it’s sooo worth it… And I actu­ally found a use for the star fruit honey I made last week!

Speak­ing of which.…

I still had one left, so I sliced it and threw it in a mason jar with some rum and sugar. It’s been aging for a week, and it smells so won­der­fully tropical.

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