Porridge (죽) is a common dish for patients, babies, or just normal people in Korea. When somebody feels sick or gets an operation, they eat porridge since it’s easier to digest. Porridge brings back your taste when you don’t feel like eating anything. There are so many different kinds of porridge using nuts, grains, seafood, vegetables, beef, or chicken. Some porridge will be sweet like hobak juk (pumpkin porridge) or pat juk (red bean porridge) and some will be very healthy like GgaeJuk (Black sesame Seeds Porridge) or JatJuk (Pine nut porridge). There are some restaurants which is specialized in porridge, which sells many different kinds. Today, I will show you how to make one of my favorite porridge, DakJuk (Chicken porridge). You might be familiar with SamGaeTang (Korean chicken rice soup) if you know about Korean food. This chicken porridge tastes similar to SamGaeTang, but it skips some of ingredients could be difficult to find, such as ginseng, dried dates, etc. This has very simple ingredients, but great flavor. The secret for a great taste is good broth, so I highly recommend that you to boil chicken with the skin and bone to get broth, and not use broth from a can or chicken stock.

Short Korean Lesson: *^^*

• Dak (닭) = Chicken
• Juk (죽) = Porridge

Main Ingredients:

• 1.5 lb Chicken (⅔ Cup Cooked Chicken)
• 5 Garlic Cloves
• ½ Cup Sweet Rice
• 1¼ tsp Fine Sea Salt
• Some Sesame Oil (Optional)
• Some Chopped Green Onions (to Garnish)

Broth Ingredients:

• 6 Cups Water
• 10 Garlic Cloves
• 10 Black Pepper Corns

Yield: About 2 Servings

Soak ½ cup of sticky rice in water for 3 hours. You can use normal Korean rice or Japanese sushi rice, but sticky rice tastes better for porridge.

To make the broth, add 6 cups of water, the chicken, 10 garlic cloves, 10 black pepper corns. For good chicken broth, I used 2 pieces of chicken breasts with skin and bone. If you want to make small amount of porridge like me, use the left over chicken for something else.

Boil the chicken for 45 minutes to 1 hour until the broth is reduced to about half (3 cups) on medium high. Remove the chicken from the broth.

Drain the broth. You will get about 3 cups of broth.

Remove the skin and bone from the cooked chicken. I’m going to use only ⅔ cup of chicken for porridge and rest for something else – chicken salad or chicken and waffles. Shred ⅔ cup of chicken thinly and prepare 5 garlic cloves.

After 3 hours in water, drain the water and add the rice to the broth.

Add the chicken, and garlic to the broth.

Add 1¼ tsp of fine sea salt. Depending on your taste, you can adjust the amount of the salt.

Cook it for 25 to 30 minutes until the rice is cooked. The first 20 minutes is on medium high, and simmer until it is finished. Occasionally, stir it, so the rice will not burn to the bottom of the pan.

Put some chopped green onions to garnish. Depending on your taste, you can drizzle a little bit of sesame oil on it before serving, but I like to skip sesame oil since I want to taste the natural chicken and garlic flavor.

Here is Korean style chicken porridge. It tastes best with any kinds of kimchi. Enjoy ~~~~

I wish I could share all my Korean food with you. Thank you for visiting my site. This post is especially for my friend, Arleen, who wanted to know how to make Korean porridge.