Cooking in the Sand Clay Pot

 

Appears in
top 1000Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking
Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking

By Eileen Yin-Fei Lo

Published 2009

  • About
As I mentioned earlier, the sand clay pot was a necessity in our family kitchen when I was growing up. The pots of rough, grainy clay with glazed insides and tops were used in many ways. We cooked congees, made stocks, brewed soups, and simmered stews and braises. We also used them to cook rice with different soy sauces, various meats, taro root, sausages, and bacon.

One of my favorite childhood clay-pot dishes was rice cooked with lop cheong (sausage), Chinese bacon, and pieces of roasted duck, which we called lop mei fan, or “cured-meats rice.” We children also knew that when we were ill, bo chai fan would be prepared for us in a sand clay pot. It combined pork liver and rice and was believed to be a restorative.