Happy July everybody! It feels a tad strange to be writing about comfort foods in the middle of summer. I don't know about you but I often associate comfort foods with the bluster of Autumn and the chill of Winter. This past week the Summer sunshine has been dulled with some heavy rain and stormy weather and I've been craving a taste of home. The colder weather has made it feel more fitting to have a bowl of soup.
Most of us have a favourite comfort food, the food that we eat when we are sick, under the weather or just feeling in need of a pick me up. It’s often something more on bland side, something simple that our mothers would feed us when we were poorly as children. My husband’s comfort food is thick white toast with lots of butter. Mine is my mother’s chicken and rice soup. This is often called Rice porridge or Jook or Congee. It is a simple soup made with stock that has rice cooked in it until the rice turns the soup thick and creamy but has not yet completely disintegrated. It is a very popular breakfast food in Hong Kong and is often what Chinese babies are given as their first solid food when weaning. The stock base can vary from pork to chicken, to seafood and every person has their own favourite way of cooking and eating Jook. I love my mom’s, made with a chicken stock base, topped with Century eggs, sliced spring onions, a sprinkling of white pepper and soy sauce. She will add traditional Chinese ingredients, things like dried shrimps and dried scallops to add flavour and umami to the stock. As children, we would add so much soy sauce that the creamy white soup would turn a muddy brown. My Dad loves a seafood base and eats his with salted peanuts. I've been feeling quite homesick recently so I've been turning to foods and recipes that remind me of home.
My own version of Jook is simpler than either of my parents’ recipes. I use a whole free range organic chicken, but you can use chicken legs or thighs if you prefer. The chicken portions are sometimes cheaper than buying the whole chicken. We at Barlow Towers are trying to eat meat less frequently in general and to buy the best quality we can when we do eat meat. The important thing is to use bone in chicken, in order to make a really flavourful stock. If the stock doesn’t taste good then your Jook will be disappointingly bland. Buy the best quality chicken you can afford. You won’t use all of the cooked chicken in this soup, you can use the rest of the cooked chicken sliced for sandwiches, salads or pasta sauces.
It really is very economical!
The recipe is somewhat time consuming, requiring low slow simmering on the hob but there’s very little hands-on effort. The only slightly tricky part is removing the chicken bones from the meat. You can leave to pot of soup to do its thing, simmering away until you add the rice towards the end, when it will need more frequent stirring. I promise, it’s worth it though!
Viv’s Chicken Congee. Serves 6 generous bowlfuls.
Ingredients:
1 whole medium chicken or 4 bone-in chicken legs (a drumstick and a thigh together count as one leg)
3 tbsp Shaoxing Rice wine
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced thickly
3 spring onions
2 carrots
2 cloves garlic
½ tsp whole black peppercorns
200g rice
Water to cover
1 tsp salt
Century eggs, soy sauce, white pepper and extra spring onions, sliced thinly to serve.
Method:
-Find a pan big enough to fit all of your ingredients. I use a big deep saucepan with a capacity of about 3.8 litres.
-Peel the garlic and add to the pan along with the ginger slices. Wash the spring onions and pop those in the pan.
- Peel your carrots and chop them into big chunks, add these to the pan too.
-Add the chicken to the pan, sprinkle over the rice wine and peppercorns.
-Add enough cold water to the pan to cover all of your ingredients. Depending on the size of your chicken and pan, you might need up to 2 or 3 litres of water.
-Put the pan on the hob on a medium heat and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and allow to simmer for 1 hour.
-Skim off any scum or froth from the top of the stock as it simmers. After 1 hour turn off the heat.
-Using a sturdy pair of tongs, take the chicken or chicken pieces out of the stock. Allow to cool slightly. Cut or pull the chicken meat away from the bones and keep to one side, reserving all the bones too. Take the softened carrots out of the stock, they will have given up their sweet flavour to the stock by now. I eat these carrots as a cooks treat, drizzled with a few drops of soy sauce.
-Return the bones to the stock and bring back to a simmer. Cook gently for another hour to extract the maximum flavour.
-Allow the chicken meat to cool completely. Keep a couple of handfuls to one side to shred or chop back into the soup at the end. I normally use one of the chicken breasts for this. Keep the rest of the chicken covered in the fridge and to use in other recipes.
-After the hour's simmer, turn off the heat and strain the stock through a fine sieve into a large bowl/clean pan, discarding the bones, spices and bits of veg. You should have about 2 litres of liquid. If you have less stock than expected, then add some more water to make it up to 2 litres.
-Return the stock to the heat and stir in your rice. Bring back to a simmer and allow to cook gently for another hour. Stir frequently as the rice can stick to the bottom of the pan. The rice will start to break down and the soup will be very thick and creamy. You don’t want the rice to breakdown completely, but neither do you want to be able to see distinct individual grains. The stock should turn very milky. You might sometimes need to add another cupful of water (I use about 250ml of freshly boiled water) if it is too thick.
-Season with salt to taste (for this amount of soup I use 1 tsp of salt which doesn’t seem like much but it’s because I will add extra soy sauce when serving) and some white pepper.
-Shred or chop a couple of handfuls of the reserved cooked chicken and stir in to heat back through.
-Serve this in bowls, topped with finely sliced spring onions, a drizzle of soy sauce and a sprinkle of white pepper. Try adding roasted salted peanuts or sliced century eggs if you’re feeling adventurous.
To save time you could always use shop bought chicken stock and add shredded cooked chicken but it won’t have the same depth of flavour. I encourage you to give the recipe a try. When my mother cooked this, I could tell what was for dinner before I opened our front door. It wafted deliciously savoury smells through the whole house and out onto our street. Now, when I cook this, my house smells comfortingly like home and family. This soup is what I make when I feel homesick and lonesome. It’s a hug in bowl form.
So many cultures have their own form of Chicken soup, from Jewish chicken soup to the very British, Campbell’s cream of Chicken soup in a tin. It is always something comforting and restorative. There are even scientific studies showing Chicken soup might be helpful in treating colds and viruses due to its anti-inflammatory properties (Rennard BO, Ertl RF, Gossman GL, Robbins RA, Rennard SI. Chicken soup inhibits neutrophil chemotaxis in vitro. Chest. 2000 Oct;118(4):1150-7. doi: 10.1378/chest.118.4.1150. PMID: 11035691). In this study it was a Lithuanian chicken soup recipe used. Moms and Grandmas all over the world already knew of it’s curative properties!
Do you have a traditional chicken soup recipe? What are your favourite comfort foods? I'd love to know!
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