A Love Letter to Plain Rice Congee
This Asian staple is nostalgia in a bowl
When I traveled to my ancestral home of Jieyang, China, last year, I woke up every morning excited about the plain rice porridge buffets at my hotel. There would be a rice cooker brimming with warm congee and a table lined with accompaniments like pickled radishes and Chinese crullers.
It surprised me that eating these comforting bowls of porridge in a place I had never been would remind me of home in Los Angeles, over 7,000 miles away.
While savory congee — like the ones slow-cooked with ground pork and century eggs at Cantonese cafes or topped with soft-boiled eggs at trendy restaurants — gets the most attention, it’s the homestyle plain porridge that sends me, along with many ethnically Chinese and Taiwanese people, back to childhood dining tables.
The consistency of congee runs the gamut from viscous to soupy, depending on preferences and regional traditions. Sometimes tender chunks of sweet potatoes make their way in. But the magic of unembellished porridge is that it can serve as a blank canvas for a smorgasbord of salty pantry items found in Asian markets. Some of the…
