This was my second attempt at rice congee. The first attempt was a horrible failure. I suppose that’s what happens when you just wing it and don’t follow any recipe at all. For my second attempt I grabbed the first recipe I found online: 9 cups of water for 1 cup of rice keeping it on a low simmer for an hour to an hour and a half.
Once the congee had the consistency of the one I had tried in Korea I poured into a dolsot. A dolsot is a stone pot that can be placed in the over or directly on a stove top:
I put the dolsot into the oven and set it to broil in the hopes that I would get I nice crisp rice coating like the one I had tried in Korea. I didn’t get it as crispy as I’d like but it turned out really good:
I also mentioned Tteok in several post in the past. I made a quick visit to my local Korean grocery store and they had some fresh Tteok on the counter. It’s consistency is somewhere between soft dough and chewy pasta and is often sweetened to use as deserts.
Koreans eat it as street food when mixed into a spicy gochuchang sauce. It’s also found in a multitude of other dishes (Ramen noodles, chicken dishes, and even some seafood dishes). Here’s a quick picture of the stuff as I was cutting it up to get it ready for the freezer:
Even though I ended up putting too much pepper into my congee it was pretty happy with the result! Can’t wait for the next time I make this dish to do it correctly: Adding some garlic cloves along with a few dates into the rice.
It’s going to be a good winter….
