HomeCooked

Century Egg Congee

Another congee recipe… CY’s favourite out of all my cooking. And my favourite congee from Mum… I don’t bother to try century egg porridge outside after I’ve learnt how to cook this one 😛 The step of marinating the rice with sesame seed oil came from one of my colleagues at work. That step helps to make the congee gooey-smooth and delicious.

Serves two

Ingredients

• 150g lean pork, cut into bite-sized chunks
• 2/3 cup uncooked Thai fragrant rice
• 3 tsp of salt
• Water
• 3 tsp of sesame seed oil.
• 8 to 10 medium dried scallops
• 1 century egg (shell removed and washed), cut into chunks
• Fried onions and spring onion (for garnishing)

Method

• Marinate pork with salt by rubbing salt all over the pork. Leave in a jar and refrigerate for 2-3 days.
• Wash and soak dried scallops for 20 minutes. Save the water from the soaking to add to the pot during cooking.

We’ll be using a electric crock-pot to cook the congee. The one I use is just large enough to cook congee for two. You may need to adjust the amount of ingredients if cooking for more people.

• Rinse pork in water to remove excess salt before cooking.
• Wash rice grains and add sesame oil. Mix well.
• Place pork, rice and scallops (together with the water used to soak them) into crock-pot.
• Pour boiling water from the kettle into the pot. For my particular pot, I fill it up to four-fifths full.
• Cover the pot and set the power to “High”.
• Leave to cook for 1 hour.
• Switch to “Low” power after 1 hour.

During the entire cooking process, do check from time to time and stir contents of pot with a ladle to prevent the rice from sticking to the bottom of the pot. You may also need to add water while you stir — the idea is to make sure that the porridge doesn’t turn too gooey. At the same time, it shouldn’t be too watery/runny.

• 30 minutes before serving, add century egg pieces and stir well.

Total cooking time: 3 hours.

Serve hot with fried shallot / onions and chopped spring onions.