Friday, January 14, 2011

Turkey Brown Rice and Pearl Barley Jook

















This past week has been really cold. So I decided to make some jook again! Jook is chinese rice porridge (although I haven't tried any other rice porridge). I decided to make this as healthy as possible, thus I used turkey, brown rice (Gen Ji Mai) and even added pearl barley! I've posted a recipe previously here. But I didn't have cooked rice and I eliminated the chicken stock. So here is what I did for this jook.

1/4 cup of brown rice (I used Geni Ji Mai and I LOVE it!)
2 tbsp of pearl barley (you may add more to your liking)
1 to 2 cups of water (might need to use more as the jook thickens)
1/2 to 1 cup of leftover turkey (meat, drumsticks, wings, bones, carcass, etc*)
2 dried scallops (break them to smaller chunks)
Dash of sea salt
1 or 2 slices of ginger (Optional)
green onion slices (Optional)

1) Place brown rice in a pot, add in water and bring to boil.
2) Reduce heat to medium high and stir occasionally. Rice (generally majority of starches) will cauase the bubbling to rise up high and overflow, so keep an eye on it from time to time.
3) Add in the rest of the ingredients and let it simmer for about 30 to 45 min, or until rice start to soften and the content will start to thicken. Add more water to dilute if needed. Keep in mind that brown rice generally takes longer to cook than white rice, thus it goes the same when making jook.
4) Jook is ready when it looks and has the consistency of cooked oatmeal. Add more salt to taste if needed and sprinkle green onions on top, if desired.

*Cooking soup and jook with bones are a must for the chinese. The bones of chicken, turkey, duck, pig, etc when boiling with water actually generates really good taste, not to mention they are very healthy and nutritious! There are soo many different variation of soup using different parts of the bone that are good for certain part of your body. Think duck feet papaya peanut soup! I don't remember what that is good for though...your feet?

Typically I would just serve the jook with the bones and all, the meat falls off the bones and I just pull out the bones while I'm eating. But this time I decided that I should remove all the bones as well as the skin prior to putting it in my fuel bento container. Because I want to enjoy every bite of my jook, without stopping and pulling out bones in between bites.

The bottom portion of the fuel bento container is leak-proof when close with the top white layer which i placed with apples slices and grapes. This meal was a perfect lunch for a cold day!

6 comments:

  1. I've seen several jook recipes lately... do people ever add flavoring to them? Seems like it'd be pretty tasteless... just rice and a little meat?

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  2. Hi Slovakiasteph, if you cook it with the rice plain, it will be tasteless, but when you're heating it with chicken/turkey/duck and its bones in a long period of time, the meat/bone releases taste into the liquid, creating the taste in jook. If you wish, you can replace water with chicken stock to give it more taste. Jook is comfort food for most asian families, it's like chicken noodle soup for most american families.

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  5. Research shows that best brown rice has the highest antioxidant activity of all the varieties, making it a nutritious choice ( 7 ). Antioxidants are compounds that protect cells from damage caused by an excess of molecules called free radicals, which contribute to a condition known as oxidative stress.

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