Sogong Jukjip, a porridge place in Seoul

Tags

korea, Korean, korean restaurants, porridge, sea urchin, sea urchin porridge, seoul, seoul restaurants, uni

This is a rather hole-in-the wall porridge place in Seoul. Nevertheless the food is soulful and good. The banchan is also simple, but they would be foods that you probably won’t be able to find in Malaysia. Even if you do it wouldn’t be this fresh.

We got our hotel concierge to help us make a reservation. The place isn’t very big and is like a family style restaurant. We walked to the restaurant to find the proprietor pacing up and down the road, looking out for us, which was very nice of him as we would have missed it otherwise, being unable to read Korean hangul. My Korean is limited to the common phrases bandied about in dramas. My interest in a drama peaks when someone starts eating onscreen. Delicious food they have in Korea, and Korean style porridge is satisfyingly savoury, unlike the bland Teochew style porridge that people seem to enjoy back in South East Asia.

The colourful storefront.

They’ve got a variety of porridges, ranging from vegetable to beef to abalone and even uni porridge. The sea urchin lover that I am immediately picked this out and I excitedly pointed to the photo in the menu (thank god for picture menus).

I was served a warm bowl of thick rice congee, with tongues of lightly cooked golden sea urchin peeping out like treasure. Seaweed is scattered over as garnish and a single egg yolk graces the very centre of the bowl.

As you can see, the banchan includes some spicy fermented squid, blanched vegetables, seaweed and fresh kimchi. There is nothing else to want for. The porridge manages to be tasty, yet gentle and subtle in layers of flavour that stand out the more you eat it. It isn’t cheap but I thoroughly enjoyed the meal and would definitely come back again.

Address: 86-1 Bukchang-dong, Jung-gu, Seoul 100-080, South Korea

Phone: +82 2-752-6400

Advertisement

Japanese style rice porridge

Tags

creamy porridge, Egg, healthy, japanese, nori, okayu, porridge, quick meals, rice, rice porridge, seaweed, spring onions, zosui

This is one of those quick fixes that can be done with just cooked rice and an egg. The other ingredients are cupboard ingredients (those that can be stored for a really long time), which is the beauty of this dish really.

If you’ve heard of the nabe (hot pots) that Japanese really love, you’d have also heard of them adding rice into the leftover stock once they’re done cooking the rest of the food. They then turn the rice into porridge, and thus, nothing is wasted.

And it is really delicious! I tried this “zosui” (the Japanese refer to thick rice porridge as zosui/okayu) in Hokkaido after a delicious kani-nabe ( I did NOT just swear at you lol!). Kani means crab, so what we had after the crab hotpot was some delicious stock. The waitress added more stock to it and then added precooked rice and let it simmer for a while before adding egg. It was the best porridge I’ve had!

I try to replicate it here the best I can without such expensive ingredients, crabs don’t come cheap in Singapore. I’ve come pretty close to it I think.

Ingredients (For 2 pax, or 1 hungry person)

• 1 cup cooked rice
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/4 cup dashi (this is the second bottle from the left) – you can make it yourself, using konbu, anchovies and soy sauce but I found this more convenient
• 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp mirin
• 1 tbsp sake/cooking wine
• Handful of chopped spring onions for topping
• Handful of seaweed (nori) strips for topping

Cooking Instructions

Pour the dashi, water, mirin and wine into a pot and bring to a simmer.

Add the rice and cover the pot with a lid. Simmer on medium high heat until the rice softens. If you prefer really soft rice in the porridge, you could simmer it a little longer, just add some water so it doesnt dry up and stick to the bottom of the pot.

Once you’ve reached your desired consistency, turn off the heat and pour the egg into the centre of the porridge.

Work quickly and use the bottom of a ladle to stir the egg round and round until the egg is completely incorporated into the porridge.

You want the end result to look creamy. This is the end result of stirring the egg well. If you let the egg cook before you stir it in, it is going to look like an egg drop soup. Not like it tastes bad either, it just will not be as creamy as the picture below.

So the egg has to be quickly stirred in, in circles starting from the centre of the pot. If you were to stir it any way you wanted, the egg may end up streaky -___-

Then ladle it into a bowl and top with spring onions and seaweed.

So there it is, creamy Japanese porridge (obviously with zero dairy in it).

I love spring onions so I went overboard with it ;p