No brainer chicken porridge

I love cooking.

If you follow my instagram you'll know that I post heaps of food pictures; stuff that I cook and stuff that I eat. I'm not quite a foodie or a masterchef hopeful though. As much as I enjoy Masterchef, which is coming back soon, honestly I don't think I'll ever be able to cook stuff as complicated as they do there (cooking rabbit?? venison?? lamb brains?? uugh nah.) stuff that I cook is usually quick and cheap because I'm poor money wise and time wise hehe. sometimes I do enjoy a sunday full of cooking though, especially when I cook for someone else other than myself.

Anyway...here's my very first recipe. I made this few weeks ago when it was cold in Sydney. Nothing better than soup and congee on a rainy day! The mr loved this and always ask me to make them when he's sick. When I was living in Indo, these stuff are consumed at all time of the day, you can have them for brekky, lunch, and dinner. There are plenty of congee styles there is in Indo, all of them are unique and most are tasty. This one that I make is a more chinese style congee and its super simple. You can make this even when you are fully drowsy from the flu and cold.

WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE THIS NO-BRAINER CHICKEN PORRIDGE


2 cups of white rice
About 2l of water
Chicken stock cubes (I use Royco brand.. South east asia style!)
Chicken pieces (amount is up to you)
Soy sauce, white pepper to taste
toppings: chinese fried bread (cakwe), green onions, fried shallots,chinese sausages, salted duck eggs etc etc..

1. first, boil water in the kettle, and then pour to a deep pan (whatever you use to make soup)
2. Drop your chicken pieces to the pan, and wait until it become all white. I do this because most of the time I use random pieces of chicken that I found on my freezer. Doing this will thaw and cook the chicken much faster, like 5 mins or so.  Take the chicken out and cut them into small pieces with a scissors.  You can leave it longer if you want and then shred them when they are fully cooked or chop the raw chicken before you put them into the pan.
3. Drop the 2 cups of rice to the pan, as well as those chicken pieces you just chop up. 
4. add those chicken stock cubes... 2-3 cubes should be enough.
5. Now boil the shiz out of that porridge. Its going to take forever (as in 45 mins plus) and you will have to check and stir it every 10 minutes or so to make sure that the rice does not stick to the bottom. When the water dries out and the porridge is not in the consistency that you prefer, add more water and seasoning.
6. After the porridge reaches the watery softness gooey ness that you like, turn off the heat, scoop them to your big bowl and garnish with chopped green onions, and all the toppings.

The above toppings are suggestion only. There are an endless list of things that you can eat with the porridge because it's technically just like rice. I like it with just chicken, chopped onion, fried shallots and soy sauce, but sometimes I add some salted fish or salted duck eggs when I have them. Just use your imagination and add anything in your porridge. This porridge is fridge friendly too, so if you make too much you can save it for the night or the next day and heat it with microwave. 

Hope you enjoy this! Now back to work.. hehe..

xx Liz