Tim's Special Chicken Mushroom Congee

Two and a half hours of sweat, love, and hot cooking led to 4 bowls of happiness. Yup, that is right 4 bowls, that's how many I had after cooking this dish. Congee is a dish that the Chinese and Vietnamese people are very well aware of. We consider it as a comfort food, much like Americans consider clam chowder as one of their comfort foods. Congee is perfect to consume on a cold day, especially with it rains or snow. It calms and sooths the soul when it's hot right from the bowl into your mouth. I wouldn't consider congee to be a soup although it looks like soup but it's actually not depending on who you ask. Congee can be made thick or watery and anything in between, it's almost like chowder for a lack of better term. I love congee, mom makes it when anyone in our family is down with a cold, flu or fever. It's just a very easy dish to consume and it goes down easy depending on what you put into your congee. Congee can be made as simple as plain (like tomato soup) with nothing in it, to flavorful and hearty with many added condiments and types of meat (like New England clam chowder).

The prepartion wasn't that hard at all. I used 5 chicken thighs, washed, cleaned and put into a pot of boiling water, this will cook the chicken and turn the water into a wonderful chicken broth. I didn't measure how many cups of water, but I just used a normal size pot with good depth (I don't even know the size) and filled the pot with water up to about 3/4 of the way. Cover the pot with a lid and let the chicken thighs simmer for about 30mins on med-low heat. After that, add in one whole white onion (peeled, cut in halves), let the onion settled in the pot and release its flavor for about 20mins. Remove the onion, add in 1 1/2 cups of uncooked rice, but becareful of how much rice you put in. the MOST important thing is know how much rice is to put in the pot. Too much can turn into a very thick mud-like congee and too little could lead to watery congee. I usually start out with 1 cup of rice to be safe but for beginners, i suggest starting out with cooked rice and add them into the boiling pot as cooked rice takes faster to cook into a mooshy creamy consistency. You can always add more rice if you think there is too little of it in the pot. Whatever else I add in the congee to give it the taste is a secret so I won't be elaborating on that. Sorry! However, as you can see in the picture that there are chicken pieces of course from the chicken thighs that I boiled, mushrooms, bean sprouts, red chilli paste, cilantro and green onions. Enjoy