FOODlog #196: Hong Kong Chicken Rice Porridge

3 weeks ago I cooked lunch for the cafe staff meal and I made Hong Kong-style chicken congee or also known as chicken rice porridge. It is a fairly easy dish to cook in terms of the amount of ingredients needed but actually it takes a lot of time and effort as well as some skill to make it the right way.

You'll first have to wash the rice. I prefer only washing it once as oppose to 2-3 times when cooking rice as you'll want the starch content in the rice for this dish.

For the chicken I used only chicken drumsticks as it has lots of the chicken collagen which you want in this dish to make the end result of the porridge really creamy and smooth. I marinated the chicken with soy sauce, oyster sauce, white pepper powder, some salt, and sesame oil.

In a large pot, add in the rice and chicken and let it boil. About 30-40 minutes cooking, remove the chicken as it should be fully cooked and you want to shred the meat from the bone and remove all the flesh.

Add the bones back into the pot with the rice and continue cooking for another 2-3 hours. You can cook this as long as you want but definitely at least 2 hours. This is so that every grain of rice is fully broken up and becomes a thick, lush, smooth, and creamy bowl of goodness. Because it becomes thicker and thicker in it's consistency, I mentioned it takes a lot of effort because you'll need to constantly be stirring the pot to make sure the bottom of the pot doesn't catch and the porridge starts to stick to the pot. It'll burn and ruin the whole dish.

So keep stirring the pot every 3-5 minutes on low heat for 2 hours and you'll get the best porridge you've ever eaten in your life. Add the shredded chicken back to the pot for the final 5-10 minutes and you're done.

Serve it warm in a bowl and add some thinly julienned fresh ginger, sliced crisp spring onions, a drizzle of sesame oil, and also soy sauce which is optional, together with a little more sprinkle of white pepper.

A super delicious dish that really energizes you for the day and especially delicious on a cold and rainy day. Have this when you're having a cold and you're sure to recover very quickly.