Nanzaro had his wisdom teeth extracted this summer. He had to be on soft diet for a few days.
I received an email on how to make porridge in 10 minutes just in time for Nanzaro’s ordeal.
Here is how it’s done:
- Rinse and soak the rice for 10 to 15 minutes
- Drain and freeze the rice
- Bring water to a boil; the ratio of water to rice is 1 to 10 to 13 depending on how thick you like your porridge
- Add the frozen rice and a piece of thumb size ginger, peel and smash
- Boil for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally
- Add meat of your choice, I mostly use ground pork marinated with soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, corn starch and sesame oil. I added water to the marinated ground pork to loosen the meat so that the meat will not clump up in the porridge
- Boil for another 5 minutes and it’s done
- It actually takes longer than 15 minutes if you like a very creamy soup, maybe add another 10 to 15 minutes.
How long does the rice have to be frozen? Just as long as it takes to boil the water?
Hi L.S. I do not think the rice can be frozen in such a short time. I usually place the rice in the freezer at least 2 hours before I make the porridge. Just need a little planning ahead.
Hi Suanne, this is the first time I heard of freezing the uncooked rice to make congee. Just curious on what is the advantage of doing that?
Hi Joseph, I got the method from an email from a friend in Chinese but I could not find the email now. I’m not proficient in Chinese but I used google translate to read that email when I got it. I remembered it said something like when you soak and freeze the rice, water crystal in the rice will expand when frozen. When you cook the frozen rice, this helps the rice to break up faster. Anyway, I have been cooking porridge with this method and it works.
Yes your explanation makes sense. I’m going to try that method. Thanks for posting.
Tried this method but somehow the rice flavour and fragrance seemed to be lost and also not as creamy.