Soups & Stews

Basic Jook (a.k.a. Juk, Congee or Rice Porridge)

March 17, 2009 by Rebecca 4 Comments

My boys gave me a cold this week. I cannot tell you the joy this gives me. Not because I love slobbering and running from the nose, eyes and every other mucus membrane on my head. I’m just relieved that I got it from them instead of the other way around. That way there is no guilt! And since I was fully healthy to take care of the little shavers when they were under the weather, they got the royal treatment. From cartoons on t.v. to hearing their favorite stories fifty times to their favorite foods they got whatever their little pea-pickin’ hearts desired. So again? No guilt! I was free to feel as punky as I actually did feel. So I read my favorite stories to myself, watched ‘What Not to Wear’ on t.v. and made whatever I wanted to eat. Namely, jook (a.k.a. juk or congee.) I had made it for the kids, too, but it’s good for what ails you. What can I say?

Tangent alert: I will clear this up right now. I have no claim to being an expert in the field of jook/juk/congee/lugau/rice porridge. None whatsoever. Crave info on it? See this link. I just know that millions upon millions of people eat some version of it daily and they do it for a multitude of reasons. Among those reasons: It’s simple to prepare. It’s dirt cheap to make. It’s delicious. It’s filling. And it’s really, really hard to screw up. This is a major bonus when you can hardly see through the bleary, cold-addled eyes in your head. Tangent over.

Okay, wait. One more little bit of tangent. I’m probably going to horrify a bunch of traditionalists with this recipe, but I’d like to reiterate that I’m not an expert. I simply know how I like it. Now the tangent is officially, seriously over.

How many of you out there want to slave over a pot of soup when you feel like crud? I don’t see any hands going up. Yeah, I thought so. I don’t either. This is where jook is the king of all soups.

Last tangent today. I promise. Is it a soup? Is it a porridge? It’s both. Depending on the rice/water ratio you use you can push it in either direction. More water? More like soup. More rice? More porridge like…

Jook is traditionally served with all kinds of accompaniments that vary depending on where in Asia you’re eating it. In Korea it might get a side of kimchi. In Japan? Maybe some umeboshi or salmon. In China it could be served with fish or century eggs, among other acoutrements. I, not being bound by tradition, can put whatever the heck appeals to me. And what appealed to me was the way I usually make it; chicken broth and short grain rice simmered until the rice disintigrates topped with green onions, sesame oil and Sriracha and a hard boiled egg. Take that you nasty cold virus!

My head is clearing up just looking at this.

Make it any old which way you choose. Throw a chicken neck in there and nix the chicken broth if that floats your boat. Got a squirrely tummy? Nix the chicken completely and prepare with just the rice and water and serve it with a drizzle of honey or sprinkling of brown sugar. Feelin crazy? Toss in some minced chile peppers while the rice and water simmer. Make it yours. As long as you keep close to the basic 1 part-rice-to-10-parts-water ratio you can do what you want to make it taste the way you want. Make it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. The best part of this recipe is that it prepares itself in the slow-cooker while you loll about in your flannel jammie pants with a box of tissues and a good book. Isn’t cooking fun?

For a printer-friendly, photo-free version of this recipe, click here!

Basic Jook

1 cup short grain rice (I use sushi rice)
10 cups chicken broth (or you can use 10 cups water and 4 bouillon cubes *gasp*. It’s not all awful, you know…)
1 teaspoon neutral oil (like canola, vegetable, peanut, etc…)

I love sushi rice. I love it in sushi. I love it in jook. If you don't have some go buy some now. Or order some.

Not pictured? Chicken broth. If you've seen one mason jar of chicken broth you've seen 'em all...

Have you seen sushi rice before? See the stubby little grains? They are fabulous.

optional for serving:

1 cup milk, either dairy or soy
thinly sliced green onions
leftover shredded meat
hard-boiled eggs
julienned carrots
soy sauce
hot sauce
toasted sesame oil
congee eggs

In the bowl of a large slow-cooker, stir together 1 teaspoon of neutral oil and the short-grain rice until the rice grains are coated. Add the chicken broth (or your desired substitute) and stir to combine. Place the lid on the slow-cooker, turn heat to ‘LOW’ and allow to cook for 8 hours. Just prior to serving, bump the heat up to ‘HIGH’. If you’re using milk, stir it in now. Recover the slow-cooker and allow to cook for 30 minutes. Turn off the cooker, uncover and stir prior to serving.

To eat the Foodie With Family way, drizzle with a little toasted sesame oil and soy sauce, top with sliced green onions, add a few drops of Sriracha and chop a hard-boiled egg into the jook. This may not cure the cold, but it sure makes you feel better!

This is my comfort food. This makes me very, very happy.

Back to normal programming tomorrow. If you want to play along here’s what you’ll need:

2 lbs dried cannelini beans (a.k.a. white kidney beans)
1 onion (or the frozen tops of two onions… were you paying attention here last week???)
olive oil
Herbes de Provence
salt and pepper. But you had that anyway, right? Please say yes.
garlic, darling… You must have the garlic.
pita chips, crackers, breadsticks or bread.

Are you interested?

…Just in case you, like me, live in the middle of nowhere and can’t buy sushi rice at your local mini-grocery, here’s a link to my life-line: Amazon.com. What do these people NOT sell I ask you.

Filed Under: Breakfast Foods, Component Foods, Healthy Foods, Instructional, Main Dish, Rebecca, Recipes, Side Dishes, slow-cooker, Soups & Stews Tagged With: comfort food, congee, jook, juk, porridge

According to Jim, it’s Pretty Good Soup

October 25, 2008 by Valerie 1 Comment

Now, admittedly, I do follow some recipes for a lot of dishes I prepare, but soups and stews are very forgiving foods to make, very flexible and a great way to use up those bits and pieces that don’t seem to have anywhere else to go. And most of these creations are dubbed by Jim as being “Pretty Good Soup.” This is high praise indeed, and I always know there won’t be much leftover when I hear those words floating on the air.

So, today’s venture: Outside of a few minor chores, I spent much of today reading, but when this afternoon rolled around, I knew I wanted to come up with something warm and savory for supper, since Jim was spending a good deal of the day outside dealing with some hefty chores in the cold Northern Michigan air. (We are preparing for our first major snowfall that is expected tomorrow night, and he was ‘battening down the hatches.”) When I checked the refrigerator looking for supper inspiration, I found a few slices of fairly lean bacon, some sliced mushrooms and a couple cups of leftover beef broth, and that was enough to get things going. I started by chopping the bacon into large pieces and threw them into a pot to brown and render their fat. While the bacon fried, I took a couple of minutes to roughly chop some onion and a handful of potatoes. Once the bacon was browned, I tossed in the onion for a few minutes, threw in the mushrooms for a bit longer, then tossed in the potatoes, letting it all cook together for a couple minutes more. Everything in the pan went into the crockpot, I deglazed the pan with the beef broth, pouring that over the ingredients in the pot, added a little more water, some pepper and a good amount of dried thyme leaf. Popping the lid on, I turned the pot on high and went back to my book.

Before…

About a half hour before dinner time, I added some bits of buerre manie (flour and butter creamed together) into the soup to thicken the broth a bit, wrapped a loaf of cheese bread in foild and tossed it in the oven to heat. Half an hour later, dinner is served! Bowls full of good hearty soup, warmed slices of bread, followed by a handful of cold, juicy green grapes. Simple, warm, delicious and satisfying–Pretty Good Soup.

After…

Sorry, we gobbled it all up before we even thought about getting the camera out!!

Filed Under: Getting Creative With Leftovers, Recipes, slow-cooker, Soups & Stews, Valerie Tagged With: leftovers, Soup

Carrot Cauliflower Soup with Sesame Yogurt Cream

September 13, 2008 by Valerie 6 Comments

Remember all the salad bar goodies mentioned in my last post? Well, I decided I really needed to use up a lot of those carrots, and being a lover of warm soup on cool days, I naturally went in that direction. The soup I ended up making is fairly simple and quite flexible, and is a good way of using up some of those leftover veggies. I also had a small amount of yogurt which always works well with creamy soups, as well as a couple lonely slices of bread, which would work well for croutons. The bread had sesame seeds, which made me think of toasting some sesame seeds to sprinkle on top of the soup, as well as adding a little sesame oil to the yogurt for flavor. As a lot of you are already most likely aware, one thing leads to another in the kitchen…and using up all these bits and pieces gave me sort of a warm, frugal feeling all over, if you know what I mean. Anyway, to the soup…

Carrot Cauliflower Soup with Sesame Yogurt Cream

The sesame yogurt cream, sesame seeds and croutons took this simple soup to an amazing place!

The instructions for all the condiments for this soup are at the bottom of this post, and they can easily be prepared while the soup is simmering away.

For the soup:

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil, or half oil and half butter

2 lbs. carrots, chopped, peeled or not, as you like

1 to 2 cups cauliflower florets

2 medium potatoes, cut in large chunks, peel left on

6 cups water, veggie broth or chicken broth

1 teaspoon dried thyme leaf (1 tablespoon if fresh)

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, heat oil, then add onion and garlic, saute for 3 or four minutes. Add the remaining vegetables, water or stock and seasonings, bring to a boil, and simmer till the vegetables are soft, about 20 to 25 minutes. In batches, carefully puree soup in a blender or food processor: NOTE: IF YOU ARE USING A BLENDER, LEAVE THE LID PARTIALLY OPEN, AND HOLD LID WITH A DISHTOWEL–YOU NEED TO LEAVE SPACE FOR THE STEAM TO ESCAPE WHEN BLENDING. IF YOU PUT THE LID ON TIGHTLY, IT WILL EXPLODE OFF THE TOP AND WILL COVER YOU AND YOUR KITCHEN WITH VERY HOT SOUP.

Once the soup is pureed, correct for seasoning, and ladle into warm bowls. Drizzle with sesame yogurt cream, and sprinkle with croutons (recipes follow) and toasted sesames seeds. Sit in a comfortable chair, preferably by a warm fireplace or woodstove, and slowly savor the goodness.

For the cream:

1/2 c. yogurt

1 t. sesame oil

pinch of salt

Whisk together all ingredients, and put to one side.

For the croutons:

2 slices whole grain bread

2 T. olive oil, or half oil and half butter

Heat oil in a large skillet, large enough to hold the bread cubes in a single layer. While the oil heats, cut bread into 1/2 to 3/4 inch cubes. Toss in hot oil, and toast in the pan, tossing now and then, till the croutons are crunchy and a nice deep golden brown. Set aside.

Toasted Sesame Seeds:

For this recipe, I used 3 tablespoons of sesame seed. Whenever toasting seeds or nuts, be sure to have a small bowl or plate handy to put the seeds on as soon as they are toasted; this will allow the toasting to stop immediately, for if you keep the seeds in the pan even with the heat off, they will continue to toast.

Place the seeds in a skillet large enough to hold them in a single layer and begin heating over medium high heat, gently stirring now and then. It will take a while for them to brown but be patient–once they begin to brown, they finish very quickly. You will see the pan begin to show signs of an oil appearance as the seeds begin to release some of their oil. The browning should begin shortly thereafter. As soon as they have browned to your liking, pour them into a small bowl to cool, and set aside.

Filed Under: Getting Creative With Leftovers, Instructional, Soups & Stews, Stretching your dollars, Valerie Tagged With: carrots, leftovers, sesame, Soup, Valerie

Cold Creamy Zucchini Soup

August 14, 2008 by Rebecca 4 Comments

I am aware that my kids may be the exception here, but they live for vichyssoise. Seriously. When we were planting potatoes this summer the kids looked at me blanky until I explained that we could make almost endless vichyssoise and homefries. That got their attention and they got their hands in the dirt, STAT!

I can’t explain their fascination with cold potato and leek soup logically. My eldest and second born eat anything I put in front of them. My third born, not so much with most veggies, but he’s coming around. My fourth born has a nearly clinical paranoia of all foods vege and green. The only exceptions are green grapes and Granny Smith apples. My fifth born dislikes anything he decides to dislike whenever he feels like it with no pattern whatsoever. Naturally, any food they all like predicably gets shoved into the rotation as frequently as possible.

We are, however, being overrun by man eating zucchini right now. We have zucchini the size of femurs that seemingly grow overnight in our garden. Obviously, once the skin gets thick they get tossed to the chickens (and NOT on them as some people around here seem to think is the best way to get their attention.) Miraculously, some of these gargantuan zukes still have delicate skin and very few seeds. That makes it human fare!

I have grown somewhat weary of three versions of “I don’t like zucchini” at our dinner table so I employed subterfuge to great effect last night. A beam of light came down from heaven and illuminated my zucchini and blender. It was divine inspiration. I made zucchini-ssoise. Or faux-chyssoise. Or whatever you want to call it. This soup is also good warm, but really people, it’s August… If you want warm soup go for it. Just not here.

Faux (a.k.a.) Zucchini Vichyssoise. Delicious no matter what you call it!

Faux-chyssoise

Ingredients:

3 TB chopped onion
3 TB butter
3 TB flour
2 C milk
1 C water
1 tsp chicken bouillon granules
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
4 cups shredded zucchini (approximately 1 large zucchini)
1 c. (4 oz.) cheddar cheese, shredded

In a large saucepan, saute onion in butter until tender. Stir in flour until blended. Gradually stir in milk, water, bouillon, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thick. Add zucchini. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes or until zucchini is tender. Stir in cheese until melted.

Puree in your blender in two batches, making sure to remove the center part of your blender lid and cover with a tea towel. This is important because it allows the steam to escape the blender without blowing the lid off the whole shebang!

This yields 4 servings, so my advice is to double this because you’re going to want leftovers. Serve hot or super chilled. So, so good. Please try this!

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