Chicken Juk

닭 죽, Dak Juk

Posted by Aeri Lee on January 15, 2009 Leave a comment (62) Go to comments

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 is easier to digest. Porridge can bring back your taste when you do not 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 seed porridge) or JatJuk (pine nut porridge). There are some restaurants that specialize in porridge. Today, I will show you how to make one of my favorite porridges, 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 that could be difficult to find, such as ginseng, dried dates, etc. This has very simple ingredients, but it still has great flavor. The secret for the great taste is good broth, so I highly recommend that you to boil chicken with the skin and bones to get the broth, and not use broth from a can or chicken stock.

Yield: 2 Servings

Short Korean Lesson: *^^*

Dak (닭) = Chicken
Juk (죽) = Porridge

Video Instructions

Main Ingredients

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

Broth Ingredients

6 Cups Water
10 Garlic Cloves
10 Black Peppercorns

Directions

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, and it makes a thicker broth.

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

Boil the chicken for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or 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 am 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 in small pieces and prepare 5 garlic cloves.

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

Add the chicken and garlic to the broth.

Add 1 tsp of fine sea salt. 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 then simmer until it is finished. Occasionally stir it so that the rice will not burn to the bottom of the pan.

Put some chopped green onions on top 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 kind of kimchi. Enjoy! Thank you for visiting my site.