Name: Basic Rice Congee (Juk)
Yield: Serves 4 to 6
Cuisine: China
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon peanut oil or vegetable oil; 7 to 10 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped; ½ teaspoon salt; ¼ pound pork tenderloin or other lean cut, trimmed of all fat and sinew and ground, finely chopped, or processed to a paste in a food processor and then finely chopped, or ¼ pound lean ground pork; 3 to 4 scallions, finely chopped; Soy sauce; ½ cup Chinese pickled vegetables, finely chopped (optional); ½ cup loosely packed fresh coriander leaves; Salt and Freshly ground black pepper; ¼ cup lightly dry-roasted unsalted peanuts, coarsely chopped; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 to 2 red cayenne chiles, finely chopped (or substitute any medium-hot fresh chile, such as jalapeño); 8 cups water, plus extra boiling water as necessary; 1½ cups whole or broken long-grain rice (Thai jasmine or Chinese- or American-grown long-grain; not basmati or any of the parboiled rices)

Preparation info

Serves
4 to 6

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

Seductions of Rice

By Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

Published 1998

About

Congee is breakfast food in China. It is served piping hot in big ceramic or metal bowls, with Chinese-style soup spoons. On the table, or served directly on top of the congee, are various little flavorings such as preserved vegetables and fried peanuts. Congee makes for a good breakfast, especially on frosty mornings.

Early one morning in Lhasa, in Tibet, we came to see it from a new perspective. Two women, one from Hong Kong and the other from Japan, checked in to the hotel where