"Get your clothes on! Get ready! Got breakfast for ya." "Look, you get porridge, and it's happy to see you." "Get out of there." Hey, what's up guys welcome back to "Binging with Babish." Where this week we're taking a look at the "congee" from "Mulan." A simple porridge made from that most abundant of foodstuffs, rice. I'm sorry for the relatively simple recipe this week, but despite having a lot of fun meeting you guys at Vidcon, it pushed my production schedule into the day before you're watching this very episode. But I still think we can have fun with this recipe. Let's start by making a "barebones" congee; that is, a ratio of 6 to 1 cups water to rice, so that's 6 cups of water to one cup of long-grain jasmine rice that we're going to bring to a bare simmer, partially cover and cook for one and one half hours until the rice is totally broken down and becomes a thick, creamy porridge. Now during the cooking process you may notice that the water evaporates too quickly, If so, add more water, a cup at a time, until the desired consistency is reached. It should look like, well, porridge. And while its viscosity is entirely up to your preference, do not eat this without seasoning heavily with salt and pepper. Now it's time for the smiley face bacon which I attempted to cook in the shape of a smile but as you can see they just sort of naturally straighten out as they cook. But, when you take them off the heat and let them cool on a paper towel, this is when you can shape them to the appropriate specification. And while the bacon drains, it's time to address eggs. Now Mushu's a very small guy and he's serving the congee in a very small bowl. So I think that this means quail's eggs, which have a very thick inner membrane so they can be a little tricky to crack; just pierce them with a knife and carefully crack them open into your awaiting skillet filled with bacon fat. Simply cook them sunny-side up until the whites are set and the yolks are still runny and then it's time for presentation. Let's start with a generous helping of our congee. In this, its most basic form, perhaps the blandest foodstuff known to man -- so it's a good thing we've got a few bacon fat fried eggs and some bacon. And look at that, your breakfast is smiling at you. I have to admit, I am charmed. In fact, this little guy is just so cute, I don't know if I can bring myself to eat him -- ah, no I'm gonna eat him. I'm gonna eat his old face. And while of course the bacon and eggs are nice, once they're done, this is a really, really, bland porridge so we need to go back to our building blocks to make something a little bit more exciting. We're also gonna see if we can drastically cut down on our cook time by employing the use of a pressure cooker. We're gonna keep the same liquid to rice ratio of 6 to 1 but this time we're gonna use homemade chicken stock. Alternately, you can just add some chicken parts to the pressure cooker as it cooks, then you get some nice shredded chicken at the end. I'm also gonna add a one-inch knob of ginger, finely chopped and one clove of garlic, finely chopped. As usual, do not season until the end of cooking. Put this guy on high pressure for 30 minutes, quick-releasing the pressure and generously seasoning with salt and pepper and now it's time to start focusing on additional congee accoutrement -- contoucherment? What? Sorry, we're frying some thinly sliced garlic and thinly sliced shallots in a little bit of vegetable oil and draining on paper towels, slicing up some green onion and bringing a couple other new friends to the party. As you can see the chicken stock made for a darker brown congee, if you don't wanna do that, add the chicken parts as I described earlier, or you can make a lighter colored stock by not frying your chicken parts before simmering. We got a bigger bowl and that calls for bigger eggs. I've got 2 sunny-side up eggs here, and we need a bigger bacon smile and since they don't really make bacon much bigger let's just double up. And now how about some sautéed shitake mushroom eyebrows that's both cute and delicious. But, before it gets too cute, let's give him a little scallion beard. Which to me sounds like it could be a pirate antagonist from "Candyland" or something. And how about some black sesame seed pupils that's sure to make it more realistic and a little creepy. Some pickled ginger ears for further anatomical correctness and some curly, crispy, shallot hair. What else does this guy need, uh, how about a nose? Let's do a crispy, fried garlic chip nose, since that's probably the smelliest ingredient. And then peanut, uh, peanut, um, uh, peanut, I don't know but the guy's got peanuts in his beard. A few dots of delicious, sriracha acne. And that's just about as many facial features as we can give this thing. I gotta admit he's pretty cute, and I have much higher hopes for how good he's gonna taste. I know that Mushu used his chopsticks in the movie but I'm gonna opt for a spoon, because congee is not very chopstick friendly. And, as predicted, this is pretty friggin delicious. It's a flavorful and anthropomorphic breakfast that I can really get behind. And he would definitely join the clean plate club if he wasn't so darn cute. I think I'm gonna call him "John von Congee."
Tip don't use a vegetable peeler use a spoon on ginger way safer and easier. That way the end clip does not happen as you can really hold it good and firm and not worry about peeling your finger.
Couldn't just use smaller chicken eggs huh?
In my congee, I typically have pork floss, furikake, bamboo shoots, deep fried gluten, and century egg.
That's some pretty thick congee.
I'm sure the 2nd bowl tastes great but it definitely won't clear your body of "hot air" /s.
I like how this dudes videos went from front page with a million views to barely noticed.
You know I just noticed this in the clip from Mulan—why on earth does Mushu hand her chopsticks instead of this to eat her breakfast with?
I find this to be hilariously inauthentic (Both versions) in the way Babish flavors his congee and how Chinese cooks flavor their congee.
Sidenote: Sometimes vinegar is employed, having some of the ingredients be boiled in with the congee...small touches like that)
...Buuuuuut the second version probably tastes delicious.