Brothy Rice

[00:00] So over the last year, so the short-form cooking internet seems to be really into brothy rice. Pretty brothy rice, creative brothy rice, brothy rice controversy.

[00:12] But the real question is, is this only an influencer thing? Or is it a real thing in China? Because there's rice and there's broth here. So of course it's a thing, depending on where you are, it can be called

[00:26] soaked rice, tang fan, broth rice, or tang pao fan soaked broth rice. But before we go further, let's make it clear that this form of rice and liquid is different from kanji, aka jok or jou.

[00:40] Kanji is made by cooking dry rice with a lot of liquid and make a porridge. While pao fan brothy rice is made by putting cooked rice in with a soup. And it's definitely very much a home cooking thing,

[00:53] rather than a dish that you will see on restaurant menus, because pao fan broth rice at its core, it's just a very good way to reheat rice. Like when you want to have that extra rice laying around your fridge,

[01:07] of course you can make a fry rice. But sometimes you just want something soupy and soupy, so that's when pao fan comes into play. Now, there are two general approaches here.

[01:19] You can think of it as cooking soup method and ladle in soup method. For the cooking soup method, you will make a soup and toss some cooked rice in. For this method, you do want to use some leftover dry rice and then quickly cook it together.

[01:34] For the ladle in soup method, you will simply make a soup and then ladle that onto your rice. For this method, you can use fresh rice straight from the rice cooker. So in this video, we'll cover three brothy pao fan.

[01:49] First, a home cooking stable from around Shanghai does go Thai pao fan, which uses the cooking soup method and is such a classic that's basically mandatory to cover. Second, a chicken soup pao fan from Guizhou that uses the ladle in soup method.

[02:04] And finally, tomato and beef pao fan, a lately drinking food from Chongqing that may just be our favorite among the three. So first, Thai pao fan. Okay, I know this doesn't look like much and it's leftover food through and through,

[02:18] but it's a great introduction to the simplicity of pao fan philosophy and techniques. So the basic of this dish are only two things. Left over rice and baby bok choy Shanghai Qing.

[02:30] Besides that, it's really just clearing out your fridge. Some pork's classic, maybe some mushrooms or even some chili rice cake. So while we are giving you a recipe, remember that this are just the essence

[02:43] and you should definitely worth off off this idea and use what you have around. We'll be using leftover rice for this. It's drier and will have a better texture, but you do have a bit of flexibility.

[02:55] You can use fresh rice straight from the rice cooker, but it will be softer so just remember do not cook it for too long. Now, let's quickly prep the essentials. Here are 250g baby bok choy cut into half-inch sections and set aside.

[03:11] Then, let's slice the other two addins into slithers. Here we have four fresh shiitake with stems cut off, slice them and set aside. Next, it's 100g lean pork, slice into slithers too,

[03:25] then a quick marinade with the classic seasoning listed on the screen. And now we can cook our pao fan. First, long yell. Add in one tablespoon large into a hot wok, then heat on medium,

[03:37] add in the shiitake, fry it until soft and then darken about three minutes, then it's good to the side. Now, add a bit more oil if needed, then add in our pork. Spread it out, fry for 30 seconds, then flip.

[03:52] Fry for another 30 seconds, then loosen it up. Once the pork's changed color makes everything together, and add in one liter of cool water. Turn the heat to high and bring it to a boil, then let it simmer for three minutes on medium heat,

[04:08] and that's our broth base. Now add in 300g left over rice, break it up until there's no big clumps, then add in the baby bok choy and season with half teaspoon salt, plus a teaspoon each MSG and chicken powder.

[04:23] Once the baby bok choy turns the darker green, heat off. Now, scoop it out into your bowl, sprinkle on some green scallions, and now your Shanghai style Thai Pao Fan. Veggie brothy rice, it's done.

[04:36] Next up, Guai Zhou chicken soup rice. Now, when it comes to home cooking and Guai Zhou, this is not so much of a dish, but more of something that you can just do. When you have some chicken soup in front of you,

[04:48] you can just lay those some soup onto your rice and mix it together. People do that all the time. But at the provincial capital of Guai Yang, some shops talk that homie idea and turn it into restaurant concepts,

[05:01] so what you do is you walk in, get a jitan fan, and choose the toppings that you want. It can be a big chicken leg, maybe some gizzards, hearts, eggs, whichever part you want.

[05:13] First, today, we don't want to go too intense, so no worries, we don't need to handle the whole chicken or organs. Instead, we'll take inspiration from some of the shops and focus on big chicken thighs.

[05:25] And, because we'll be relying on the legs to flavor and make a proper soup, do try your best to get the best quality supermarket chicken that you can get. But then, Chris was making me really paranoid about the chicken qualities in the West.

[05:39] He insisted that the chicken thighs will dissolve after the two-hour cooking time and won't have enough fat or flavor. So, I'm not sure if it's right, but to cover our bases, we'll also toss in one tablespoon of dried shrimp at the beginning,

[05:54] taking inspiration from this classic soup from Southwest China. And if there's no enough fat, I'll just finish with some schmalz at the end. So, this one's also simple. So, just to a big pot, toss in two big chicken thighs,

[06:08] about one kilo in total, then together with one inch ginger smashed, a scallion tie into a knot, half teaspoon white peppercorns, likely crushed, and our one tablespoon dried shrimp.

[06:21] Now, add in one and half liter cool water, bring it to a boil, skim if needed, then cover, and let it cook for two hours or no, or when you can easily poke a chopstick through the thigh

[06:33] and it's starting to fall off the bones, maybe one hour for supermarket chickens. Then, to serve, we can use fresh rice straight from the rice cooker, so scoop 150g fresh rice to a bowl,

[06:46] add in the seasoning listed on the screen, then lay the two cups of soup in. Carefully put the thigh over the rice, sprinkle on some scallion greens, and now your chicken power fan is also done.

[06:59] Lastly, tomato and beef tang fan from Chongqing. Now, this one is definitely squarely restaurant food. From a homemade dish to a late night drinking snack, it got a similar lineage with the tomato and egg noodle soup

[07:13] from Chengdu that we covered before. It's something tasty and comforting for the young people after they leave the club. So, very warning, this version is not a home cooking dish, but it's incredibly delicious,

[07:27] so not too bad to make and totally worth it. So, to make it, first we'll grab 300g of fatty pork belly, slice those into strips and quickly marinate those with a teaspoon salt and mhg, half teaspoon sour sauce,

[07:42] mix well, then coat with a generous amount of oil. Add that to a cold pot or wok, and slowly render out that large for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the pork belly is nice and crispy,

[07:55] reserve the large in a bowl, and the crispy pork belly on a paper towel lined plate. Then, grab 650g of tomatoes, preferably ripe, if you can find it, cut a little accident,

[08:08] quickly blanch, peel, remove the stem, and toss it into a blender. Now, we're using a blender here, because we're specifically making a restaurant version of this, many of which will include some blended or broken down tomatoes.

[08:23] So, then, to that, toss in one tablespoon, shallot wine, quality spoon salt, and half cup of water, blend that well and set aside. Next, we'll separate the whites from the greens from four scallions,

[08:36] slicing the greens and reserving, and mincing the white bits together with four cloves of garlic on an inch of ginger, set those aside, and now we can make our soup. To do so, just toss four tablespoons of your render large into a pot,

[08:51] and over a medium flame, fry your minced aromatics until fragrant, about a minute. Then, toss in one and half tablespoon tomato paste, and one tablespoon of red mild chili powder,

[09:03] like cashmiri, or gochugaru, and fry until the oil's good and stained. Then, add the blended tomatoes, you can stir it a bit to let the froth subside, then toss in two cups of stock, water, or a combination,

[09:16] together with the rest of the seasoning up here on the screen. We'll want to simmer that for at least 30 minutes, so during that time, we'll slice up 200 gram beef loin, give it a quick marinade with the listed ingredients,

[09:29] massage until all the liquids absorbed, then coat it with one tablespoon of oil and set aside. And after the 30-minute simmer's done, we'll first add in 300 grams of leftover rice into the broth,

[09:41] break up the baked clumps, next, the beef. Give it a final massage, then put in the bit by bit, so that the beef doesn't clump together, and once the beef's completely changed color,

[09:53] shout out the heat. And then, transfer the rice to a bowl, sprinkle some scallion greens on, and optionally, a bit of dark crispy pork belly, and then your tomato beef brothy rice is done.

[10:08] Now, I'm gonna be honest, when my algorithm first introduced me to the English-speaking world of brothy rice, it was in the form of brothy rice controversy. And my first thoughts were,

[10:21] are we really doing this again? I guess there are new generations, there are new platforms, so we're doomed to repeat the same average doom loop. But after watching a lot of those short videos,

[10:34] I could kind of start to understand some of the frustrations. If you know Chinese food, sometimes it can be a bit painful to watch. There's this limino feeling that everything is a mesh mesh.

[10:46] I think it's fair to say that a lot of those people, they don't know much about Asian cuisines. There's not really all that much to critique here, because they're not engaging with the culture or the craft of cooking.

[10:58] Like, this is their Western cooking. What are you expecting? But I really, really don't want to be two classes here, because now everybody has the opportunity to travel around the world

[11:10] and learn to appreciate different cooking traditions. Like in China, there's this classical division between two types of art. There's Yangtzein Baixue, the music and art of the educated elite,

[11:22] the cultivated, you know, something like... The Gao Shan Liu Shui archetype. Then there's the Xia Li Ba Ren,

[11:35] the vulgar, the art, the music, and that static of the masses, you know? Now, I love some nice and saranggu Qingtang myself,

[11:52] but I equally, if not more, also enjoy some Laosu Ji代代我,我要举个命, my favorite song. It's just so fun, it grabs you and pulls you in.

[12:05] It's so human. If you're watching this, you're probably pretty worldly, pretty educated. Going by our analytics, so guess that our comment section probably has one of the highest grade degrees per capita

[12:18] of the English cooking internet. But for a lot of people, people that haven't had the economic opportunities to develop that kind of taste, what they will be attracted to would likely be some basic pretty forms,

[12:31] or something in that cozy zone or being close enough for comfort, and just barely novel enough to be interesting. But that's fine, it's human. You don't have to be an expert at everything,

[12:44] like I enjoy watching Zhenhuang Drawn and listening to Yunnan Shanggu, Chris likes and pull behind fantasies and nighties pop punk. And even if you are really into food, there's nothing wrong with following this

[12:57] and getting inspirations from their plating and food styling. And honestly, we've had this video ideas on our back burner for a while now, and originally, we were just gonna call it

[13:09] soat rice. And brothy rice, it's a much better name because there's a lot to all of this. Or...

[13:34] you