Silky, Savory Chinese Rice Porridge (Congee)

Cooking rice down into a hearty porridge is a classic technique found all over East and Southeast Asia and Congee is a great example of this and Dan you're a huge fan of congee. I am I really love it So I'm a huge rice fan in general and I think congee speaks to the versatility of rice You can make it sticky and perfectly tender individual grains or you can cook it down into a comforting porridge So I'm gonna start with our rice here and I have 3 quarters of a cup of jasmine Okay, so even within the rice there's a lot of variation traditionally a lot of it was made with broken rice So when you process rice, not every every grain comes out perfectly like this Some of it's broken and that's already really broken down So it cooks a lot quicker that way, but of course people often use whole rice for this and specifically to make congee I just love jasmine for how aromatic it is use long grain and there's you know, other rices that are used as well Okay, the first step is we're going to rinse our rice. So the rinsing is an important step You know rinsing rice in general is a really good thing to do here. We have plenty of starch in the rice itself So we're not short on short on starch at all Gotcha, the exterior starch can cause some foaming while we're cooking it and you can get boil overs Which I you know, I'm sure you've experienced with oatmeal and that kind of stuff. So this actually helps prevent that interesting That looks good. It's running clear Like to shake it and then give it a few good drops like this Just make sure we've gotten that water off and we transfer it over to our big Dutch oven Let's start by adding a cup of chicken broth. Just a cup just a cup So a little bit chicken broth add some nice meatiness and depth and next I'm gonna add there's a little bit of salt in the chicken Broth, but I'm gonna add three quarters of a teaspoon Next up. I have nine cups of water. That's a lot of water now. I get why you use the big pot Yep, need the big pot for it. I'm just gonna bring this up to a boil over high heat So the congee is up to a boil here we're gonna reduce the heat we want a vigorous simmer here We're actually gonna cook this a fairly long time congee is often cooked for 90 minutes sometimes even more and it's really again a personal preference thing of how much you want the rice to break down you can cook the Rice until it blossoms like a flower is one descriptor for it You can also cook it until almost no grains are visible So we're gonna go something a little bit more in the middle there So we're gonna do a vigorous simmer to speed things up a gentle simmer It could take a really long time and boiling can be good, too You see that a lot but you can get boil overs, right? And so what we want to do is eliminate those so we're gonna use the lid here But we're gonna put a wooden spoon in like ah, so we're gonna have a little bit of space for water to evaporate We're gonna do this for about 45 to 50 minutes until it's really silky and tender and I'll show you what that looks like Okay at cooks Illustrated. 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Some of the starch molecules leach out of the granules and onto the surface of the rice This is what causes grains of rice to stick to each other With continued cooking some of the granules burst entirely releasing their starch Risotto is an example of rice cooked to this point as more granules burst the starch fills the cooking liquid The long starch molecules tangle with each other making the liquid viscous and it's at this point that the rice has turned into congee Eggs are a really common topping for congee I think probably the most traditional is the thousand-year egg Which is really tasty and wonderful kind of chopped up on top, but you see hard-boiled eggs. You can see raw eggs Sometimes we're gonna make some jammy eggs. Yeah me egg Yeah, so they're like partway between a soft-cooked egg and a hard-boiled egg yolk is like thick and creamy It's really really nice So I have a half inch of water in this pot here and it's boiling and I'm gonna drop my eggs in not drop them I'm gonna place them in really carefully. It's not a lot of water. It's not a lot of water So it's not even covering the eggs. Nope, not at all So we're gonna cover this up and we're gonna cook them for eight minutes here Starting them in the hot water like this is key. It's gonna make them a lot easier to peel All right, that's been eight minutes. Take the lid off there. We're gonna pop over to the sink here All right, I'm gonna drain the water off And run some cold water over them that's gonna help stop the cooking but it really just makes them easier to handle I find if you're running them under water, you can pretty easily peel them while they're out here Yeah, this is just gonna come right off We'll pop them in this bowl and we're gonna work on another topping. Okay, we're gonna make some fried shallots We're gonna use a microwave technique, which I really like a lot So I'm starting with three shallots that have been sliced thin if you have a mandolin This is a great time to use it It doesn't have to be super super thin but they all need to be pretty equal so that they cook at the same rate That makes sense to that. I'm gonna add a half cup of vegetable oil. Any neutral oil is fine here So we're going to the microwave for about five minutes Okay, that has been five minutes and you can see that the shallots have shrunk down below the level of the oil that's good It means we're deep frying I'm giving you a quick stir just to even out the temperature and I'll go back into the microwave now for another two minutes and Repeat the stirring and microwaving every two minutes until they're starting to get golden brown about six minutes These are starting to look really good, so it's been about six minutes We want them to be a little bit more brown I'm gonna drop the intervals to 30 seconds because it goes super fast at this point Beautiful goodness those smell good. Don't they now the key is to get them out of here right away They can go from beautiful to burnt pretty quickly Ah, so what's interesting is they come out really soft even at that point and they don't get crispy until they cool down Aha, while they're still soft like this. That's when you want to hit them with some salt. All right Those look beautiful delicious. So it's been about 50 minutes Our rice is done and you can see it's turned into this really luscious texture So we burst a ton of starch granules and all that liquid around it. You can see is really thickened and beautiful It's really nice. Yeah, this is just pure comfort food. So good Look at all these toppings. Yes, we have lots of toppings to choose from. So we have some chili oil here We have some soy sauce and some black vinegar Cilantro scallion ginger. Oh, I'm gonna copy you. All right, so I'm gonna do one half an egg You can go even more if you want All right, do a little scallion a little bit of julienne ginger, which adds tons of freshness Oh, we also got some chopped roasted peanuts, which are really nice All right, and I'm just gonna go with a little bit of black vinegar on mine just to just to brighten it up All right. Let's dig in. All right Mmm That's delicious. That's so good. You said comfort food earlier. I get it now I could easily tuck into a big bowl of this if I was feeling a little under the weather or on a rainy day Yep, and you haven't tried your jammy egg yet. I haven't I have a little bit of that. That's so much richness All right. Here we go Mmm, I Really love this. It's really good, right? Yeah. Thank you for showing me how to make it So if you want to make a big bowl of comforting congee start with a high ratio of water to rice Cook for almost an hour at a vigorous simmer and top it with whatever you like Which in our case means jammy eggs and fried shallots from America's Test Kitchen a soothing and savory recipe for congee You can find this recipe and all the recipes from this season along with select episodes and our product reviews at our website America's Test Kitchen comm slash TV We hope you enjoyed this video as much as we enjoyed making it don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe to our channel and if you're ready to take your cooking to the next level head Over to America's Test Kitchen comm and get a free all access trial membership while you're there You can sign up for our free email newsletters and download our app with unlimited access to over 14,000 of our test kitchen recipes and 8,000 product reviews you'll have everything you need to cook and learn So I asked what are you waiting for? 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