The Rice Bowl · Breakfast

Pork and Century Egg Congee

Easy
20 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost

aromatic · fiery Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, real fire that builds and stays.

Ingredients

200 g jasmine or other long grain rice
2.5 L water
15 ml neutral oil
8 g salt, plus more to finish
250 g pork loin, rubbed with 6 g salt and chilled overnight
2 century eggs, peeled and diced
25 g ginger, in fine matchsticks
2 g ground white pepper
30 g spring onion, sliced thin
20 g fried shallots

The skills inside

Congee Salted water & the float test Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias Resting meat & slicing against the grain

Allergen screen

Found: egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Rinse the rice until the water runs milky rather than white, drain it well, then toss it with the oil and salt and leave it 30 minutes; an hour in the freezer does the same job faster. 30 min
Bring the water to a rolling boil in a tall pot, add the rice and ginger, return it to the boil, then hold a lively simmer with the lid ajar, scraping up from the base every few minutes.
After 50 to 70 minutes the grains will have burst and lost their edges, and the congee should fall off the spoon in a sheet rather than in drops. Slacken with boiling water if it gets ahead of you. 70 min
Slice the salted pork thin across the grain, stir it in with half the century egg and simmer 5 minutes, just until the pork turns opaque and firms. 5 min
Season with the white pepper and more salt, then ladle out and top with the remaining century egg, the spring onion and the fried shallots.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes

It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.

Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.

Knife cuts: dice, julienne, bias 150 recipes

Take any three pieces from anywhere in the pile: they match closely enough in every dimension that you would have to measure them to argue otherwise.
The cut faces are flat and clean rather than ragged or crushed; leaves and herbs are cut through, not bruised, and the board carries no dark smear where they were.
The stated size is the actual size, held against a rule or a known reference rather than called about right.
Everything in the pile is the shape that was asked for: no wedges, no half pieces, and no offcuts swept in to avoid waste.
They cook evenly, which is the entire point: at the end of cooking nothing is still raw and nothing has collapsed.

Where it goes wrong The knife was dull, or the vegetable was never squared off first, so the pieces vary: the small ones are mush by the time the large ones are cooked, and the dish has two textures where it wanted one.

At the Table

The Pour: Mimosa (weekends only)
Also Right: Cava, straight
From the Taps: -
Zero-Proof: Fresh orange juice & café au lait

Morning food wants brightness and bubbles, or honest coffee: nothing that argues before noon.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Pork and Century Egg Congee Technique: CongeeThe skill inside this recipe The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the The Rice Bowl kitchen