One of my favorite Chinese comfort food, clay pot rice aka baozaifan 包仔饭. It is considered as a street food. In Hong Kong when the weather is cold, the clay pot is very popular. The clay pot will give you a warm feeling after eaten the clay pot. It will warm up your body. The rice is soaked for an hour and prepared in a clay pot preferably on a charcoal stove. On top of the rice, cured meat like lap cheong, lap yup (cured pork belly), lap ab (cured duck) is used. There are a lot of other variety of toppings used, like minced meat, salty egg and salted dried fish. You can taste the fatty meat and saltiness of the ingredients in the rice. At the bottom, the rice is a bite burned and crispy. I mostly, make the classic preserved meat topping or chicken wings with ginger.
Ingredients
- clay pot of 700ml for 3 servings
- 1 cup of rice soaked for 1 hour
- 1 cup water
- 1 lap cheong
- 1 dark lap cheong which has a liver filling
- 1 lap yuk
- 1 slice of ginger
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
Wash the rice and soak it for an hour. Rinse the cured meat with warm water. Cut the ginger finely in juliennes. Take the clay pot and grease the clay pot with the vegetable oil. Add the water and rice in the clay pot. Put the clay pot on the stove, when the water starts to bubble, let it boil on high heat for 3 minutes. Add the ginger and cured meat on top of the rice. Let the rice simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes. Turn of the heat, you can add the light soy sauce on top and let it rest for a few minutes and eat it hot. The rice at the bottom should be crispy.
You can serve it with some pak choi or choi sam.
Another topping that I made it chicken wing with ginger
Ingredients
- 2 chicken wings
- 1 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1/2 tbsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tsp five spice powder
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 slices of ginger
- 1 tsp salt
Cut the chicken wings into 8 pcs and marinate the chicken wings with all the ingredients for at least 1 hour. Prepare the rice like above instructions. Let the clay pot chicken rest 5 minutes longer as it take longer to cook than the cured meat.
