Clean Cooking: HK Style Minced Beef Congee

Clean Cooking is a Tablecrafter series helping you prepare nutritionally-balanced, flavorful, and delicious food you can eat daily without feeling deprived.

Congee: A popular rice porridge from Asia, flourished with different toppings. This dish takes most of its texture and flavor from the various additional components. The congee acts as a blank canvas to the flavorsome garnishes of your choice. Altogether, it makes for a balanced meal — combining fresh herbs and savory protein.

One of the signature dishes from Hong Kong, our recipe for minced beef congee highlights the wholesome flavors of poached meat, the slight nuttiness of sesame oil, and the garnishes’ range of texture. You don’t need to fly all the way to Asia to sample a heaping bowl of this dish, you can enjoy our minced beef congee from the comforts of your home.

HK Style Minced Beef Congee

Yield: 3–4 servings
Time: 1 hour and 40 minutes (10 min prep / 1 hr and 30 min cooking)

Ingredients:

Congee

• ⅓ cup rice
• ⅔ cup sticky rice
• 3L water
• peanuts, for garnish
• spring onion, for garnish
• century egg, for garnish
• 1 tsp oil
• ½ tsp salt

Minced Beef Marinade

• 150g ground beef
• 1 small pack rice vermicelli noodles
• 1 egg white
• 3 tsp water
• 2 tsp cornflour
• 2 tsp oil
• salt and pepper, to taste
• ½ tsp sesame oil

Procedure:

1. Rinse rice two to three times. Drain well. Mix with a little bit of oil and salt Set aside for 20 minutes.
2. Use a large pot, bring 3 liters of water to boil. Add the rice and stir to prevent the rice sticking to the bottom of the pot. When it boils again, reduce the heat to medium and continue to stir until the rice softens and the congee thickens, about 1–1½ hours. Be sure not to let it spill over during cooking.
3. Heat up oil in a pan until hot or smoke is visible.
4. Unpack your noodles and loosen the strands for even cooking.
5. Once the oil is hot enough, fry the noodles for about a minute on each side or until it is fluffy all the way through.
6. Mix the ground beef with the marinade and the fried rice vermicelli.
7. Combine the marinated beef and the congee, or scoop a spoonful and place at the bottom of a bowl of a bowl for individual servings. Ladle hot boiling congee over the marinated beef and mix thoroughly.
8. Garnish with spring onion, crispy wonton skins, and century egg.

Were you transported to Asia with our easy Minced Beef Congee? Send us photos of your congee, we’d love to see more of your work!