Hey guys, a few notes: 1. So… written recipes are now back! Recently, Steph’s been able to split some of the cutting work editing these videos, which’s taken a huge load off my (Chris’s) shoulders. The primary place that I’ll be publishing the recipes will be on Substack, though I’ll be cross posting the recipes to Reddit as well. Ingredient lists will still be in the description box. You can check out this recipe here: chinesecookingdemystified.substack.com/p/sichuan-kongfan-a-chinese-pilaf-sort 2. Note that these written recipes WILL ALWAYS BE FREE. Haven’t even toyed around with Substack’s monetization options or whatever - in the future it’s possible we might duplicate some of the Patreon benefits (the Discord and our gratitude being the primary ones) for those that’re already hooked into Substack. The primary purpose of the platform is that it’s… absolutely a joy to write in (unlike Patreon, which’s super clunky) and I don’t need to futz around with a blog or whatever. 3. As Steph said, the rice boiling liquid is traditionally served alongside the meal as a ‘soup’ of sorts. It’s called “米汤” and thought to be quite nutritious, though the practice likely stems from times when there wasn’t enough rice to eat. Give it a whirl though - while it’s far from mandatory, it can be quite soothing… particularly in the winter. 4. So. Other ingredients. Our Malatang lady’s favorite version is pumpkin/squash with douchi fermented black beans, and if you want to try it with this recipes. Same ratio: 1/3 part cure meat, 1 part rice, and 2 part pumpkin… together with about a tablespoon of douchi added together with the seasoning. We’ve also seen people adding pork belly, cured sausage, longbean, peas, diced carrots, or hearty leafy greens like bak choy. The cooking method all follows the same logic: render out some oil from the meat component, stir fry the everything else in it, the lay the parboiled rice over. So you can definitely just follow this formula and use what makes sense to you. 5. The one recommendation we’d have would be to include *some* kind of root vegetable (or root vegetable-like-object) in your mix to give a study ‘base’ of sorts - potato, sweet potato, squash, taro, kohlrabi, etc etc. 6. This is definitely the type of dish that also have regional variations! This sort of Kongfan can be found in Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou. The Guizhou style is quite similar to the Sichuan one, with slight adjustments in seasoning. The Yunnan style is often cooked in a cooper pot and became its own thing, using potato together with the Yunnan ham. 7. Oh by the way… despite our ‘thumbnail branding’ lol, you also obviously don’t need a wok to do this or whatever. Cast iron dutch oven should also work great - the only alteration we might suggest would be to perhaps clamp back on the water a touch (~1/3 of the way up the ingredients?) to make up for the flatter shape and heavier lid. That’s all I can think of for now :)

@rpenm

8 ай бұрын

Boil and strain is the traditional method of cooking rice in India, before electric rice cookers. My grandparents used the “米汤” to starch clothes and fertilize the garden. Sounds like they were missing out!

@ChineseCookingDemystified

8 ай бұрын

@@rpenm Yeah I've heard that boil-then-strain is a legit preparation for Basmati - out of curiosity... is it ever steamed after, or perhaps covered until serving? Kind of ironic that the OG Uncle Roger video was so famous for calling out an actual technique in Indian cooking lol. Even now we feel like we have to explain ourselves whenever we pull out the strainer - "yes, this is an actual process in rural China... here's the photographic evidence..."

@neevparikh685

8 ай бұрын

@@ChineseCookingDemystifieddepends on the regional variation, but yes, it’s often left to cook covered (sealed with a lid, ideally airtight. Back in the day they used a strip of regular flour dough to act as a gasket between the lid and the pot) after it’s been boiled and strained.

@artistlovepeace

8 ай бұрын

I have served thousands of Chinese meals to customers over many years. I lose count. I love your channel and your honesty. It is reliable and factual. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with the world. I love your dishes and have eaten a lot of them.

@rpenm

8 ай бұрын

​@@ChineseCookingDemystified No steaming, as far as I know. The traditional cooking method was usually for a large number of people - families were big - so the mass may have been sufficient for it to steam slightly in the basket. Oh, I should mention - basmati was not widely consumed until very recently. Basmati is specifically associated with Mughal dishes. There's regional variation, but home cooks usually prefer other varieties like sona masoori or even imported jasmine.

The majority of biryani methods use boil and steam too. If you eat dum biryani (which is biryani cooked in a sealed pot), you boil the basmati till it’s about 80% cooked. Then remove it from the water and layer it with the meat before cooking it on low, letting the rice finish cooking in the steam coming off the meat and the masala.

@notthatcreativewithnames

8 ай бұрын

Here in Thailand, _khao mok kai_ or Thai-style chicken biryani uses jasmine rice instead of basmati because of, well, local availability, so I guess jasmine rice can be used as a substitute in this case.

@garth56

8 ай бұрын

@@notthatcreativewithnames Jasmine rice is a good sub for Basmati and I've used it often, different flavour, when I have no basmati!!!

From Fuzhou, my mom cooks a dish with rice, pork, peanuts, scallops, and seaweed. It’s really delicious, salty, savory, and some sweetness from the scallops and sweet rice. It’s cooked in a pressure cooker.

That's a really unique method i haven't seen before. It's weird, i've always known about flavoured rice in China, but having also grown up with gomoku and other takikomi rice that's flavoured and cooked in the rice cooker, i can't seem to remember any actual Chinese recipes, but i'm quite sure we have them in rural Jiangnan, just not really anything that can be "up the table" or "out into the main living/dining hall" as Cantonese would say. the only one generally known is Shanghainese vegetable rice 上海菜飯, and i like mine cooked with 小棠菜(it's a specific cultivar of bok choy that each leaf is shaped like a small Chinese ceramic spoon.) That said, adding things to rice to cook is just a "whatever we feel like" thing as opposed to a specific named dish. Throwing sliced daikon radish into rice was a starvation food when rice was too expensive post-war, and various grains is pretty common. From Japanese influences we often add various mushrooms and other flavours into cooking rice too, often it's carrots, burdock roots(gobo), yam and taro, sweet potatoes, ... Canto has all the 盅飯, a single serving one pot steamed rice, but the other ingredients are on top and not mixed before cooking.

I love how you are so thoughtful in the recipes for your international audience so that we can make it ourselves, thanks so much!

Can confirm about the pilaf method, I recently tried to make a delicious kabuli pulao with jasmine rice (usually it uses basmati rice). I’ve made it like 4 times at this point and the first three it turned out wonderfully, but the jasmine rice version ended up mushy and not as good.

South Asia also loves plain rice, everything you described, like it being a comfort dish, also applies to me

The Costco where I live caters to an Asian crowd. They usually have a basic chinese sausage, but one time they actually had the chinese smoked pork belly. I got some, and I regret not stocking up, cuz I never saw it again.

Just made this for breakfast, really tasty! Vegified it a bit though by grating in some dried shiitake and adding fermented black beans for umami.

Is it possible the video uses snow peas? Or are they another variety of green beans?

@ChineseCookingDemystified

8 ай бұрын

Good catch. In the video we actually used snap peas, but green beans would be the most common choice in Sichuan. In this dish they can be used interchangeably.

I bet Virginia ham/cured country ham would be a medium-to-pretty good smoked meat substitute. It's shelf stable, in the states it shows up around Easter and has instructions on the label instructing you to soak it before you cook with it.

On sourcing larou, Costco actually stocks it!

I love seeing “home style” dishes, the ideas of cuisines viewed through a restaurant lens are always distorted by comparison

I started doing the boil/steam method after your first video on it. Amazing method for making fried rice on short notice and I inevitably make it once or twice a week. Really gives the rice an amazing texture.

Another really informative video! I've been following you for a long time and while I'm lucky to have many good restaurants closeby in Canada, I've been wanting to make more dishes on my own and you've been a great guide 😊

Steph, is it common in China to eat jasmine rice, versus other long grain rice types? I love jasmine rice so I have it with all my Sichuan cooking at home, but I'm not sure if that's authentic

@ChineseCookingDemystified

8 ай бұрын

So usually the rice that's often used in the south of China is either Champa Rice (粘米), Simiao Rice (丝苗米), or... Jasmine rice. The former two are traditional in China, but these days if you go into a Chinese grocery store, often you're equally greeted by imported Jasmine rice from either Thailand or (especially) Cambodia. Jasmine rice is functionally the same as Champa and Simiao rice (water ratios, etc), but also has this really nice rice fragrance. When we're in China, we always try to buy the Cambodian Jasmine rice... basically to ensure international replication of these recipes. But if we were low on rice and I went to our local market (which didn't have Jasmine), I'd pick up a quality Champa rice & not notice too much of a difference.

@VoltaDoMar

8 ай бұрын

@@ChineseCookingDemystified thank you! That's so helpful.

@msjkramey

8 ай бұрын

​@@ChineseCookingDemystifiedwow! What a lovely and detailed response. I love how you take your time to really interact with your viewers

@brokenglassshimmerlikestar3407

8 ай бұрын

Yes in the south it’s common to eat rices similar to jasmin rice. But in the north people eat short grained rice like the kind in Japan. These days you can get any kind of rice any where and it depends on personal preference. I’m from the south but I really like japanese short grain rice and I think it works with most recipes.

@VoltaDoMar

8 ай бұрын

Thanks for this info!@@brokenglassshimmerlikestar3407

I think this is going to become one of my go-to dishes to batch cook and take to work for lunch. Especially as I often end up with a small amount of potatoes left over from a bag and no idea what to do with them!

@KaingMusic

8 ай бұрын

Fantastic video as always; thanks and love to you guys! Amazing the little rooster crow when listening to the fry 🐓 🤣

Love this recipe, I´m going to try it out. Here in Portugal you can find extra smoky bacon and green beans are still in season. Thanks, love your channel!!!

I used to eat a very similar potato rice dish in Kunming, this brings back memories!

Thank you so much for your Beautiful recipe

To be fair, I think claypot rice which you've also covered is kind of in that essence

Tried it tonight. Super easy. Super tasty.

"wax poetic", that's a great English idiom that most native speakers don't even know! Really interesting video.

I tried making this last night, with some added duojiao cause I was craving some heat. So delicious, I couldn't stop eating! Might be a new go-to simple rice dish for me.

At the very least, this video will finally convince me to stop trying to use Jasmine rice as a substitute in paella recipes. It's always an unevenly cooked disaster

@YindiOfficial

8 ай бұрын

i was literally thinking exactly the same cuz the amount of times i made biryani with jasmine rice is criminal atp 😭

@ChineseCookingDemystified

8 ай бұрын

Oh god all of my terrible Jambalayas... I feel so frustrated that nobody told me that the rice that was used was a long grain parboiled one... www.nolacajun.com/products/zatarains-extra-long-parboiled-rice?__cf_chl_tk=yL2oedGu5BSmz_dd2Qamonf1p7Pi2rQ2yaSnSnCkJUE-1695614841-0-gaNycGzNDDs As an aside, I'm starting to feel like "grain length" is a borderline useless way to categorize rice. Like, both Bomba rice and Uruchimai rice - despite having basically nothing in common - are "short grain". Similarly, both Basmati and Jasmine are "long grain". Like... what's the point? It describes *nothing* about the texture, stickiness, absorption... if a word doesn't describe anything useful, why even use it?

@jameshaulenbeek5931

8 ай бұрын

​@@ChineseCookingDemystifiedI've had a basmati rice at some Indian restaurants that almost looks like broken noodles, the grains are so long. I've never seen it for sale, even at the Indian markets. I definitely agree categorizing by length is the least helpful/useful way. Each variety cooks differently and works better in certain dishes

@YindiOfficial

8 ай бұрын

@@jameshaulenbeek5931 I think they like this type of rice a lot in the middle east and I do usually find it only in the middle eastern grocery stores.

The pumpkin and douchi version sounds incredible!

This looks amazing

me too😅, I love rice so much, I can't live a day without rice 😂 even I don't eat much. I enjoyed having a simple bowl meal every single day. Fluffy warm rice topped with dish, my goodness.., really comforting 🤤

Pumpkin and douchi? I'm definitely interested in that one!

Have you ever heard of a smoked fried rice? When I visited Australia in 2016, I visited an Vietnamese/Asian fusion type of restaurant that had smoked fried rice that was on another plain. Your smoked meat made me thing of it. It didn't have any soy sauce, or fish sauce, just that smokey flavor. Best I've ever eaten....EVER.

I love your channel so much 🥰😍

I have some squash at home that needs using, I'm going to try this with pancetta, scallions, garlic, squash and cabbage tonight! I think there are many Italian style cured meats that would be excellent in this. Almost any smoked, hard salami would be amazing. I make jambalaya a lot and it is a one pot rice dish. It does not use parboiled rice. I just make sure every grain of rice is well coated with fat before I add liquid. It goes in a low oven in a sealed cast iron dutch overn and cooks. It takes about 40 minutes but you get a nice toasted edge on the bottom of the pot. I think the secret to this dish is adequate fat and the version I do, uses lard or bacon fat, so there are a lot of similarities.

That looks good!

Ranch 99 in California does carry vacuum packed smoked pork this video mentioned of.

my childhood favorite

I really love your outro music.

We wanted to give this rice cooking and flavoring method a try but green beans didn't turn us on. We decided to start with "Chicken with Peanuts, Cabbage and Red Peppers" (Sui-mi Ji) from Robert Delfs "The Good Food of Szechuan" cookbook...a dish we have made many times. This has the classic Sichuan favor profile with garlic, ginger, soy, vinegar, sugar and broad bean paste. We figured the cabbage and chicken would stand up to 15 extra minutes of braising and rice steaming. The results were very interesting and _very_ good. The flavors seemed more intense than usual and all the aromatic bits remain bright and distinct. The chicken remained tender. The cabbage was tender but still had some crunch. It seemed like the covering of rice trapped the aromatics and intensified the flavors compared to the normal stir fry. I managed to burn the bottom when the water boiled away and the rice was a bit under done...next time... But, this technique is a keeper. We are thinking of other dishes to try with this. Vietnamese caramelized shrimp and onions (Tom Rim) is one idea. Sweet and sour chinese cabbage is another.

Will definitely make this :)

It’s like 煲仔饭 but flipped😂. Never knew this was a thing. Will give it a try

Plain white rice cooked well is delicious

I was taught how to cook steamed rice when I was five. (Parents had to work long hours.) The first time I made steamed rice it turn out to be barbecue rice. That wasn’t my intention It just that I didn’t add enough water and burn the rice but I got a whole lot better at it, once I got a spanking. (Talk about stress.) 😅 We use steamed rice as a filler for our empty stomach.

There’s one restaurant in sf that does this so well!!!

So, somewhat similar to clay pot rice conceptually? This particular dish looks delicious.

The pumpkin version definitely sounds interesting. I don’t tend to associate pumpkin with Chinese food. Maybe you guys could do more pumpkin to go for a seasonal theme (north American fall)

@Psynapseful

8 ай бұрын

If you get a chance, you have to try pumpkin fried in a salted duck egg batter.

i've actually seen larou here in Chile, though i'm not sure about its quality as i myself am vegetarian. going to sneak this into my wife and i's diet, seems like it'd be pretty effective to do with some variations on scottish cuisine x)

That smoked pork belly is super popular in Germany too!

I like how she said pilaf closer to плов.

As far as I know, in Japanese cuisine, there is _takikomi gohan_ of which the rice is cooked along with the meat and the veg. Cannot think of any Thai equivalent at the top of my head, though.

Sounds good, I'll have to try it. It almost seems like having to boil the rice first defeats the one pot idea. Is it the texture that makes it worthwhile?

Hokkien people has something called Kua Chai Pui/Png (with pork belly and chinese mustard). There is also Ohr-pui/ohr-png, which is rice with dried shrimp and yam. The latter is more canonic for eating northern malayan Bakkutteh.

If I wanted to convince a traditional french restaurant hotel kitchen to try MSG, what dish would you recommend I convince them with? :D

I have a zojirushi rice cooker and I always cook my rice on softer sushi setting with a bit extra water. i want to experiment more with it but it takes a long time to cook and if it messes up what i put in it it's not a nice dinner time lol. Also do you have a vanilla rice pudding recipe for rice cookers?

yooo，箜饭，i still remember my mom always made me this dish when i got good grades in junior high school.（i am from 四川 btw）

Larou made me think of Eastern European cured meats such as Lithuanian lašiniai or Ukrainiai salo. Could those be a suitable substitute?

That looks delicious, can I call it Chinese Risotto 😆 I’ll have to try it with pumpkin and maybe Chinese sausage as that’s what I have in the fridge, unfortunately other cured meats or too expensive here in the Philippines

@ribbontoast

8 ай бұрын

The funny thing here is I hear risotto referred to as Italian fried rice in Chinese XD

Not gonna lie, this is a pretty genius method

I'm always disappointed that I can't get certain meat products that you use here on the Massachusetts/Rhode Island border. Today it's Smoked Larou. I have a market about 25 minutes away but it's 99% bottled, jarred, dried and frozen and sadly none of the frozen includes things like Smoked Larou, or Char Siu, etc. I've taken to Reddit and Boston is an option. My fear is I'll have to go to or ship from NYC; and both would be $$$$! Your food - appealing as always!

The ping yum "Kongfan" does that translate exactly to "poor rice"?

Sorry if this is a weird question, Chris, but how big are your hands? I have a hard time gauging the size of the cuts on this channel because "one inch" cuts and the wok tends to look larger than expected compared to your hands

@cactustactics

8 ай бұрын

I'm pretty sure Steph's doing all the prep and cooking in this one (apart from some hairy arms rinsing the rice) if that's what's throwing you off? If you don't realise whose hands are in shot it might feel a bit inconsistent sometimes. I think the wok is on the larger side though! Like 16 inch, possibly more?

Basmati and bomba rice are really different rices. Basmati is a delicate long grain rice. Bomba is a short grain rice comparable to arborio rice. So it seems odd to mention them in the same way.

In Thailand, we eat plain white rice with side dishes. So does Japan.

Hah, I was like "hmm.. that looks like pancetta. Wonder if can substitute" then literally the next sentence. xD

This recipe would be Uncle Roger approved :) Looks great

Claypot chicken rice technique, right?

I do it all in my rice cooker

I always wonder why you say bacon like that cant be found in the West. Here in austria our smoked bacon (geräucherter speck) looks a lot like that. Maybe tastes a little different. Idk

I don't know that I'd like potatoes and rice together, but other than that it looks really good. I'd love to try it

@bootie

8 ай бұрын

potatoes and rice honestly go really well together, whole potato is often used as a thickener in caribbean style curries

Lap yuk/la rou (tried doing full pinyin tones and it keeps posting so moving on lol). Isnt to bad for the US if you have an asian market nearby. I think ive seen it on amazon too. Not as easy to get as lap cheung for sure but might be easier then a decent pancetta in some places. I couldnt have gotten the pancetta shown back home but i could get something similar to the la rou shown, though mine was always a longer thinner strip. I am assuming the Cantonese and Sichuanese versions are at least close enough here though and that could easily be erroneous. 😅

@oliverhees4076

8 ай бұрын

Yep, I've seen it in my local Costco.

@ChineseCookingDemystified

8 ай бұрын

The lap yuk we usually see in the US is the Cantonese type, which is sweet/savory and has a tone of wine. However, the Sichuan one is salty, smoky, and sometimes has a hint of Sichuan peppercorn. I guess both would work, but the flavor would be different.

@stepfanhuntsman5470

8 ай бұрын

@@ChineseCookingDemystified That was the error I was worried about >.

Thought clay pot rice w chicken is a Chinese paella (or vice versa).

Before my grandmother passed away, we used to joke that the best Vietnamese restaurant was her house because she would make all of the things you can't find in a restaurant in the US unless it was a really weird restaurant.

This is so much like a vegetable biryani (I know, many people say there's no such thing).

This seems very similar technique to the persian rice that's steamed on top of potato slices.

东亚米预先泡水就能控制最终需要的水量，烹煮时间短也没那么容易吸水过多

Quite tickled by the similarity to pakki biryani. Veg or meat is cooked and seasoned, then topped with par-cooked rice and steamed.

Imagine kongfan but with larou replaced by guanciale. ... Probably a little too expensive.

@brokenglassshimmerlikestar3407

8 ай бұрын

I bet it works. Last year I bought a chunk of guanciale for making pasta. It was expensive but lasted me a very long time. Tried using it as larou and even though the flavor was different it was really nice! Pancetta is considered a low cost substitute for guanciale so it would make sense that guanciale can also sub for larou here, albeit a pricy alternative.

I think smoked hocks would work if removed from the bone

Boiling rice and discarding the liquid is how you remove arsenic from rice, so rice-cooking liquid is probably a little carcinogenic. 😊

"impossible for people in the west" Speck: Am I a joke to you? Schinken: Am I a joke to you, too? Bacon: and what about me? jambon: ????? btw: pancetta is NOT smoked.

@lellab.8179

8 ай бұрын

BTW: you can have BOTH smoked pancetta AND not smoked pancetta (in Italian: "pancetta affumicata" the first one, "pancetta dolce" the second one), just look for the smoked one.

@ChineseCookingDemystified

8 ай бұрын

I was talking about the Sichuan one, but apparently some Asian supermarkets may carry it.

Weird. I've always used jasmine rice in dishes like paella with no issues.

How about clay pot rice? Isn't that a one dish cooked together?

@Gazmeizster_Wongatron

8 ай бұрын

Yes, I was surprised claypot rice didn't get a mention!

If you’re familiar with the word špek it’s another word for cured meat.

Complaint! :) Why would you sub one rare ingredient for another? If you are looking for a smoked pork belly sub in the west, bacon is just that! Pancetta isn't even smoked and it is more expensive and harder to find.

鸡油饭！

The pork looks a bir like guanciale

isn't the point of washing the rush is to get any dirt, etc off it? why re-use the cooking water that you strained the rice from.. you're putting the stuff you took out right back in. but love the videos!

🦝

Wait, you have claypot rice🤭

I thought India was the only place they drank the rice water!!!

Your dog didn't think the air was delicious today :(

As a bit of an east Asian music nerd, I find it interesting that this dish uses the same character as the Chinese harp, 箜篌。

Nah, this is the perk of distinguishing the pure form rice of us Asian. This is why i don't value the recipe using Jasmine as a base (despite it has full [almost too much] fragrance as it is. Steam it as it deserves to be, then add the toppings. . In my opinion, "xôi -Vietnamese" to test only the rice and clay pot rice is to test how well it match with liquid (similar to rissoto and paella)

Rice and potato ... that is a weird combination that doesn't makes any sense. Usually for me is either potato or rice, not both.

@3:58 Uncle Roger: Colander? Haya!

I buy that smoked pork every week here in the west / US we call it smoked jowl, and it's very common in groceries stores. We aren't that picky in America. I can tell more american eat simple jowl then Panchetta. Next do your research before telling us what westerns eat lmao

Get Chris back pls