Pandan chicken (gai hor bai toey) is one of those Thai dishes that seems to be more popular overseas. In fact, I have seen pandan chicken on the menu more often in Singapore than in Thailand. This vegan pandan chicken is infused with the fragrance of the marinade and pandan leaf, and is absolutely delicious!
If you don’t have a large number of pandan leaves, you can simply wrap the pandan in a ring around the vegan protein and stab a toothpick through. This will get you a lot of mileage with the leaves. However, if you do have more, then this parcel wrapping style will impart a lot more flavour. And it looks better too.
In this vegan pandan chicken, I used Meat Magic, a Philippine-made product, as the vegan protein. You can also use any seitan or vegan chick’un. For gluten-free, use tofu products instead!
Pandan is more normally used in desserts and snacks, such as Kueh Dadar and Khanom Tako. This is one of the very few savoury dishes that utilise pandan. Do you know of any others? Please let me know!
Ingredients
- Marinade
Instructions
- Pound or blend coriander roots and lemongrass and add to the other marinades. Marinate your vegan protein overnight or at least two hours.
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Wash and clean the pandan leaves. Cut off the very hard white ends because they are difficult to weave with.
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Fold one end over the other to create a little pocket. Make sure the grove is facing up (concave). The leaf folded on the top is the hard part and it is shorter. The leaf folded on the bottom is the soft part and it will be very long.
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Slide the back piece of the leaf through the hole in the bottom, keep your hand in between.
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Carefully place two Meat Magic or vegan protein pieces into the space where your hand was, and pull the threaded leaf down to secure and make tight.
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Wrap the bottom-facing long leaf around the parcel one more time (like tying a tie) and thread it back upwards.
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You will end up with neat and nice little parcels.
- Heat about 800ml or four fingers depth of oil in a large and deep saucepan. Dip a tip of the pandan leaf into the pan, if it bubbles furiously the oil is hot enough. Dip your parcels into the pan, fully submerging the part with the meat. Now you know why we keep the leaves long—they act as a handle during the deep-frying!
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Deep-fry for about 8-10 minutes. The kitchen should be full of pandan fragrance now. Drain and serve hot!
