HomeCooked

Chicken And Scallop Congee

Another classic recipe from Mum…

We love our porridge Hong Kong / Cantonese style … i.e. it should be gooey and smooth — a hallmark that the congee has been cooked for an adequate period of time. To me, porridge is the kind you find sold at the food courts: water + rice and cooked over a few minutes over a fire. I think that only works if you want fish porridge Teochew style. Congee is a totally different thing altogether 😛

Serves two

Ingredients

• 2 x chicken legs (thigh and drumstick)
• 2/3 cup uncooked Thai fragrant rice
• Water
• 5-8 medium scallops
• Salt and light soya sauce to taste
• 2 tsp Knorr Chicken Seasoning Powder
• Fried onions (for garnishing)

Method

• Wash chicken legs and strip off excess fat
• Cut the chicken legs at the joints – separate into pieces of thighs and drumsticks.
• Wash and soak scallops in small amount of water for about 20 minutes.
• In the meantime, boil a kettle of water. The hot water will help to speed up the cooking a little.

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

• Place chicken legs, washed rice grains, scallops (together with the water used to soak them) and chicken 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.

• When two hours have elapsed, remove chicken pieces from pot. Continue to cook porridge in crock-pot at “Low” setting, taking care to stir periodically.

Total cooking time: 3 hours.

Before serving porridge, strip off pieces chicken meat from drumstick/thighs and discard the bones. Add the chicken strips back into the pot and mix well. Add chicken seasoning powder, salt and light soya sauce to taste.

Serve in 10 more minutes with fried shallot / onions.