I've come to crave chicken congee when I'm sick--recently I made it in the laziest, easiest way imaginable and it was perfect:
Put some chicken pieces in a slow cooker. I used four chicken thighs straight from the freezer, actually. Add lots of peeled, sliced ginger and a few cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half. Then add some rinsed rice (I used about a cup and a half of short-grain rice to what was at least two quarts of water, and the resulting congee was still very thick). Add water (I added boiling water to speed up the process, since the chicken was still frozen) and cook over low heat until the rice is cooked to a falling-apart, porridge-y consistency. At some point you should take out the chicken pieces, remove the skin, take the meat off the bones and return it in bite-sized pieces to the congee, but this can wait until the very end if, say, you take a long nap while the congee is cooking.
If you don't have a slow cooker you can do this on the stovetop over low heat, but you'll have to check the pot every hour or so to make sure the liquid hasn't all evaporated.
While I was very sick I ate this with just some soy sauce added for saltiness and flavor. Later, when I was feeling a bit better, I used fish sauce and some chile-garlic paste and topped it with a few dried shrimp that I'd toasted in a pan.
Congee in my experience is not only good when you have a cold or the flu, but also if you've got nausea or digestive ills. I lived on it for about ten days a couple of years ago, when I had Mysterious Stomach Troubles and it was literally the only thing I could bear to eat.
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I've come to crave chicken congee when I'm sick--recently I made it in the laziest, easiest way imaginable and it was perfect:
Put some chicken pieces in a slow cooker. I used four chicken thighs straight from the freezer, actually. Add lots of peeled, sliced ginger and a few cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half. Then add some rinsed rice (I used about a cup and a half of short-grain rice to what was at least two quarts of water, and the resulting congee was still very thick). Add water (I added boiling water to speed up the process, since the chicken was still frozen) and cook over low heat until the rice is cooked to a falling-apart, porridge-y consistency. At some point you should take out the chicken pieces, remove the skin, take the meat off the bones and return it in bite-sized pieces to the congee, but this can wait until the very end if, say, you take a long nap while the congee is cooking.
If you don't have a slow cooker you can do this on the stovetop over low heat, but you'll have to check the pot every hour or so to make sure the liquid hasn't all evaporated.
While I was very sick I ate this with just some soy sauce added for saltiness and flavor. Later, when I was feeling a bit better, I used fish sauce and some chile-garlic paste and topped it with a few dried shrimp that I'd toasted in a pan.
Congee in my experience is not only good when you have a cold or the flu, but also if you've got nausea or digestive ills. I lived on it for about ten days a couple of years ago, when I had Mysterious Stomach Troubles and it was literally the only thing I could bear to eat.