Lugaw, Congee or Porridge

This is a comfort food for me. For some this maybe a food for the sick. I have plain lugaw since I started my solid food. In Hokkien we call lugaw "Am beh". In my Father's home this is always serve as breakfast as in everyday, no miss. We have it with soysauce, salt, sugar, chokolate (like champorado,but its made of sweetrice), dried salted lapu-lapu, century egg,pork floss (only when somebody went to manila and bring it as pasalubong), soysauce with peanuts or tofu. Plain and simple lugaw. Now I'm married and with kids on my own, I carry on on cooking the lugaw for my children. I guess its because I grew up with eating and its just like a habbit. Do I make sense? hahaha.






Nowadays you can see a lot of snack house having different kinds of lugaw. Of course they are called with different names such as Goto, Arroz Caldo, and etc..... I plan to just make it plain lugaw for dinner but since my son requested something with chicken, I decided to just add it on my plain lugaw.



Basic Plain Porridge

2½ L (10 cups) water or stock
½ t salt
250g short-grain rice, washed and drained
250 ml water

1. Bring water and salt to the boil, then add rice, stirring gently until water returns to the boil. Lower heat and simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour, stirring occasionally. After 20 minutes add another 250 ml (1 cup) water. Towards the end of cooking, when most of the water has evaporated, stir frequently to avoid porridge sticking. Alternatively, cook everything in a rice cooker using the porridge setting.

2. When porridge is soft and mushy, remove from heat and serve.



Chicken Porridge

500 g chicken, steamed
2 tbsp light soy
2 tsp sesame oil
250 ml chicken stock
¼ tsp salt
1 portion hot basic porridge
2 spring onions, finely chopped
2 sprigs coriander leaves



1. Shred the chicken meat or chop into bite-sized pieces.

2. Combine the soy sauce and sesame oil, and sprinkle half over the chicken.

3. Heat the chicken stock and salt and mix with the Basic Porridge. Bring to the boil.

4. Stir in the remaining soy-sesame mixture and chopped chicken (if using shredded chicken, serve in a separate dish or piled on top of rice).

5. Serve immediately in small bowls and garnish with spring onions and coriander leaves.

6. Alternatively, serve the chopped chicken separately from the rice porridge.


Note: An alternative to steaming the chicken is to thinly slice raw chicken and cook it in the rice porridge until done.