Sliced Turkey Rice 火鸡肉片饭
Sliced Turkey Rice is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
Sliced Turkey Rice (火鸡肉片饭) is the sliced-meat version of Chiayi turkey rice, the dish the Chiayi City (嘉义市) tourism website calls the city's most representative food. Instead of shreds, cooked turkey is cut into slices and laid over rice with a sauce.
How it is made
According to text from the Chiayi City Public Health Bureau (卫生局) published on the city tourism site, the turkey is poached and left to steep so that it stays tender and juicy rather than dry. Shops cut it either into shreds or into slices. The shreds often come from smaller, scrappier cuts, while the slices, which are chewier, are mostly cut from breast and thigh; slices taken with the skin on keep a balance of fat and lean.
Most Chiayi shops use Xiluo (西螺) rice, which is left to stand in the closed pot for five minutes after cooking so the grains stay springy. The sauce, a closely kept secret at almost every shop, usually starts from the turkey stock with black-bean soy sauce and chicken fat or lard. Crisp fried shallots, thinly sliced and fried in lard at a low temperature, go on last; some shops use yellow pickled radish, pickled mustard greens, dried radish or a fried egg instead.
Where it comes from
The Chiayi City tourism site relates that Taiwan did not farm turkeys until after the Second World War, when US forces stationed on the island brought large numbers into Chiayi City and Shuishang Township (水上乡) in Chiayi County. Chicken was expensive and turkeys are large, so farming spread around Chiayi. Local elders date the first chicken rice to 1949 (民国38年), when Lin Tianshou (林添寿) of the First Market (第一商场) laid shredded chicken on rice with a braising sauce and began selling it on Zhongshan Road (中山路); the turkey version developed from there. Chinese Wikipedia notes that southern Taiwan traditionally made "chicken slice rice" (鸡片饭) by steaming breast meat and tearing it into shreds or slices over rice.