Recipe: Healing Congee

In last week’s exciting episode, Sylvain and I got la grippe and we struggled not just with days of rolling fever, but with gamey guts. For nearly a week everything we ate or drank caused nausea and, er, other discomforts.

The inability to eat made us weaker and shakier, and when one is weak and shaky one isn’t up for running to the grocery store or cooking a wholesome meal.

In the past, I have relied on that old-school acronymic advice for dealing with stomach trouble: BRAT (bananas/rice/applesauce/toast). Usually a person will have at least one of those helpful foods around the house, and they do work.

But for my money, you can’t beat the magically medicinal Asian rice porridge called congee when stomach sourness comes calling.

Congee is basically rice simmered until it falls apart into a thick soup or stew. It’s a one-pot meal that’s simple to make; it can be savory or sweet, thick or thin, plain or flavorful. It’s cheap, healthy comfort food that’s easy to digest and thus often appears on the menu for those recovering from surgery or illness, but you can readily enhance it with your favorite proteins, herbs, veggies, and broths to make it into a full meal.

At our house, tum-tum trouble calls for a nice umami-ful mushroom congee with onions, ginger, garlic, and maybe chopped scallions on top. Though Sylvain and I are mostly over our recent virus, I’m making another batch of congee right now to freeze against future flu.

Congee’s the perfect winter food because of its hearty, warming properties, but you can eat your congee cold if you prefer. It retains its restorative and nutritive value either way.

There are literally millions of congee recipes online, but here’s a basic vegetarian version I use for sick days:

• one chopped onion
• one thumb ginger, finely chopped or grated
• minced garlic, 2-3 tsp or more if you like
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1 cup rice (white or brown–brown takes longer to cook down)
• 2 cups water
• chopped mushrooms, cremini or otherwise
• dried mushrooms, shiitakes or porcinis are both nice

Saute the onion, ginger, and garlic until slightly browned. You can use sesame oil for a little flavor or just water if you’re avoiding fats.

Add the broth, water, rice, fresh and dried mushrooms. Bring to a boil for two minutes, then simmer on the lowest setting for about an hour, stirring occasionally to keep the rice from sticking.

If you like your rice to still be in grain form, you can take your congee off the stove a little early. If you want your rice to dissolve into a thick broth, add more water and simmer until you achieve the desired consistency (or you can cheat and use a wand mixer to purée it in the pot).

For the invalid, serve plain. If you want to jazz things up, add your favorite meat (chicken, pork, and fish congees are popular), soy sauce, rice vinegar, root vegetables, sesame seeds, eggs, bamboo shoots, tofu, peanuts, beans, sambal, hot sauce….the possibilities are endless. You can experiment with other grains too: millet, corn, barley.

For additional leftovers or freezing, expand the recipe by adding extra onion/ginger/garlic and more rice. Just be sure to add twice as much water as rice (e.g. 2 cups rice = four cups water, in addition to the cup of broth).

I love congee because it’s a snap to make, but very tasty and easily modded. It’s brilliant.

Here’s wishing you big bowls of healing goodness, wherever you may be! Enjoy.