Interesting Chinese Porridge

Whenever people mention about eating porridge, one might associate it to a meal that is served when one is unwell. If you think this is where it ends, I can tell you how porridge is more interesting than it seems.

1) The Legend about 'scholar porridge'

Have you heard about the 'scholar congee' legend? It goes like this: during the Qing dynasty, there was a newly appointed imperial scholar met the old imperial censor by chance and invited him to a congee meal. When the new scholar found out that the old censor's son was preparing for the imperial examination, the new scholar told him that the porridge he took is called 'scholar congee'. When the old censor heard this, he was delighted about it. At the end, the old censor's son really top the imperial examination and that how the 'scholar congee' name comes about. If you want to know more about the recipe, it's basically boiled porridge with pork and other pig's assortment like pig's intestine and liver.

2) Healing properties

The reason why it shares the reputation of 'food for the unwell' is probably because it can help to promote digestion and the provide the 'qi' (or energy). It can also aid in absorption of carbohydrates that strengthens the body when most other favourite food suddenly becomes unappetizing.

3) Types of porridge

There are three method of making porridge:

a) Teochew Modern porridge

The simplest method is the modern 'teochew' porridge where the rice is cooked separately in a rice cooker. When served, you'll serve the rice with the clear seafood and vegetable soup. I especially like it with tomato pieces, fish slices and tofu cubes.


b) Teochew Traditional porridge

The other 'teochew' porridge is a traditional method; the porridge is plainly boiled with water. The soup is slightly clear and the individual grains can still be seen. This type of porridge usually goes well with light and fresh side dishes such as steam fish, stir-fry cabbage. Preserved peanuts and salted duck eggs can also give a more interesting taste to the porridge. It may seem simple but when it is eaten with the side dishes, it orchestrates an unusual but simple experience.

c) Cantonese porridge

The third type of cooking porridge is commonly called 'cantonese congee'. The soup is much thicker than teochew porridge as shorter grains (or mixture of long grains with glutinous rice grains) are used and cooked over long 1 to 2 hours with pig big bones or chicken carcass or both. To make the taste more interesting, ginger slices and garlic cloves are added to the boil. If you find this too time consuming, you can use chicken stock solution or stock cubes that is available in supermarket.


From this, the bowl of porridge is often more than meets the eye as the nutrients are stewed into the porridge. Before it is served, it is usually transferred into another saucepan and cooked further with the uncooked pork or the chicken pieces. In addition, the raw egg is also cracked into the porridge promptly before serving. These were done to prevent overcooking of the meat pieces and the egg. Sometimes century egg slice is also added, depending on your preference.


Additional tip:

- To shorten the prepartion time of the cantonese porridge, you can soak the rice overnight.
- You can using the automatic rice cum porridge cooker to cook the porridge easily

4) Additional toppings to the porridge

There are so many toppings that goes well with porridge. To name some, I like it with:-

- Pork or chicken floss toppings,
- Vegemite or bovril,
- Bacon bits,
- Chinese fried dough-sticks (or you tiao),
- Spring onions,
- Fried shallots in oil and light soya sauce,
- Ginger slices,
- Hard boiled century eggs
- Sweet chinese barbeque pork (or ba gua)
- Steam sweet potatoes
- Wolfberries,
- Raisins,
- Steamed gingko,
- Steamed sweet potatoes
- Chopped basil leaves


Related references

1) Congee: Asia's Bowl full of Comfort

2) Cantonese porridge recipes

3) Congee recipe

4) Cantonese Lean Pork Congee recipe