Congee in the Rice Cooker

I could easily cook good thick congee on the stove. But since the rice cooker offers a 'porridge' function, I figured I should just try it out. I didn't actually know how to use it; I hadn't used it for the years I've had a rice cooker. So it was with a great deal of suspicion when I loaded the rice grains into it. I used 1 cup of rice instead of ½ cup. ½ cup is good for two persons. 1 cup is great for three to four persons. It's a 1:10 ratio of rice grains to water/stock. Unfortunately I have to use white jasmine rice. Some people add a pinch of glutinous rice into the mix, but I don't bother to do so.

Most pots of porridge cook in two hours in the electric cooker. This one was no different. The cooking time for porridge-on-auto is set at 60 minutes. Just manually extend it, you would definitely need that. It allows you to extend by a 15-minute block each time. That would control the end results. 

Soaked a few dried scallops and oysters. Made a base stock for the congee with bones of chicken and pork. That was the stock for the congee. I dislike using stock cubes. Minced Indonesian pork and ikan kurau formed the proteins. I definitely prefer to make a trip to Tiong Bahru market to get all I need. I can get decent fish anywhere, but the pork would have to be Indonesian pork. That meant buying it from the stalls at the wet market. The meats were marinated, then sat in the fridge. 

When the stock was ready, I poured it into the cooker. The minced pork went in straightaway, and the fish went in 30 minutes before I decided to stop the cooker. 1 hour and 45 minutes later, I opened up the lid, stirred it and went hmmmmm. This was not a fail. What a surprise! The texture was rather decent, and the consistency was not too bad. I was rather pleased by how the congee turned out. #ImpieCooks2021 

The man loved it! Well, I do too. Heh. I like a neat kitchen, so once the stock was done and porridge was on the boil, I was going to clean up the stock pot and all, but he requested for the bones to be kept in the pot for a bit. He wanted to nibble on them. He would put a dash of chilli and soy and eat them up. Okaaay. I used fleshy-enough pork ribs; the chicken stall sold me a whole $2 carcass that still had flesh on it. So he had plenty of meat. 

If this is the standard that my rice cooker can churn out, then I have no problems with cooking congee this way in future. It does make washing up a lot easier. I am particular about congee. I don't like the smooth blended ones; I don't like them watery. It's not difficult to do congee that I love, but it isn't easy to find one at the stalls that I do like. 

I love Cantonese-style congee, and I can eat it any time, any day. I've had superb congee all my life, cooked by people who knew how to cook and didn't just prep it for me while I was ill. To me, it's a happy food item. My congee holds plenty of flavors. I don't over-salt it. It's great for people who don't like too much salt. If you want it saltier, do add a sprinkle of white pepper and good quality soy sauce.