Hi everybody,
I usually make rice with my pressure/rice cooker but when I want to eat nurungji (scorched rice) and sungnyung (scorched rice tea) I have to make it the old-fashioned way, in a pot. When I use a pot I can create that nurungji, which I scrape off and eat as a snack!
Even if you have a rice cooker, you should give this method a try and enjoy some nurungji and sungnyung.
Ingredients
- 1 cup of short grain rice
- water
Make rice:
Yield: 2 servings of cooked rice
- Put the rice into a heavy bottomed pot. Rinse in cold water and drain, then scrub the wet rice with your hand.
- Rinse and drain until the drained water is clear, then drain out the last of the water by tilting the pot as much as you can. The rice should still be wet.
- Add 1 cup of water to the pot and soak for 30 minutes with the lid closed.
- Bring to a boil over medium high heat and let it cook for about 10 minutes. Open the lid and turn over the rice with a spoon.
- If you want to make nurungji, then let it simmer for another 10 minutes, long enough for some rice to get burnt on the bottom. If you don’t want to make nurungji, then cook for a shorter time, around 5 to 8 minutes.
Fluffy rice is ready!
To get the nurungji out of the pot:
- Scoop all the cooked rice out of the pot and leave the scorched rice in the bottom.
- Simmer the pot for 2 minutes with the lid closed over low heat.
- Open the lid and sprinkle some drops of water over the rice with your fingertips. Cover it again and let it cook for 1 more minute.
- Than scrape out the nurungji from the outside in with a spoon, you’ll see it comes out a lot easier.
Make sungnyung (scorched rice tea):
- After removing as much nurungji from the pot as you can, pour in 2 cups of water.
- Boil the water over low heat and serve.
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I ordered the same pot that you cook your rice in, and followed directions and it turns out perfect every time!
Its tasty and I enjoy the crispy nurungji scorched rice cap, and love drinking the sungnyung (scorched rice tea) with my meal!
Thank you for all the amazing recipes you have created and been so kind to share with all of us!
I’m so happy to hear that you take so much pleasure in preparing your own Korean-style rice and enjoying scorched rice, and sungnyung (nutty scorched rice water)!
Your enthusiasm brings me happiness as well! By the way, it’s so cute that you ordered the same pan as I did.: ) Just so you know, any heavy pan will work perfectly fine as well.
I was wondering, is there potentially something I’m doing wrong when making nurungji?
I’ve followed the directions to a t, but for some reason, the rice sticks to the bottom of the pan like glue, and my poor husband winds up scraping the bottom of the pot to get it out. It seems like the pot we’re using is almost the same one in the photo, so I’m not sure why it’s such different results. ㅠㅠ
After scooping out the cooked rice out…. return pot to make the bottom scorched if needed. THEN did you sprinkle a little water with your finger in the pot on the scorched rice and quickly cover and return to the heat for a minute…… it steams alittle, remove from heat, and the take your spoon and go around the edge first and it should lift right off the bottom. Watch the video again to see these steps. I make the tea from the burnt part in the pot, tastes great and starts to clean the pot!
Maangchi unnie,
I tried this recipe for the first time and I loved doing it. The whole process is so much fun and I love doing your recipes. I have learned quite a lot from watching your YouTube channel and reading your recipes. I hope that one day, I become a wonderful and amazing chef for my Korean boyfriend. Thank you for everything that you do and please take care of your health…. oh, and please don’t skip your meals. Saranghae ❤
I eat a lot of rice and usually I use a rice cooker. But the bottom always gets stuck and I have to soak it overnight to be able to clean it. I just made it in the pot and it was perfect! I don’t understand how this keeps happening. Is my rice cooker broken? (I’ve used it for over 3 years at least 4 times a week)
I hope someone knows, because over here in The Netherlands most people don’t eat a lot of rice especially short grain.
Thank you!
Are you using the correct amount of water? I just use a cheap rice cooker I brought from MediaMarkt or Blokker (I can’t remember) and mine works fine without burning but I do recommend a nice rice cooker that you can get from the Toko markets, those work really nice as well
Hi Maangchi! Can you share what brand of short grain rice is your favourite? Thanks so much!
Hi, Still need to leave rice in water for 30mins if cooking in rice cooker? Thank You :)
Wow!! Thank you Maangchi!! :) :) this is the best rice i’ve ever made! Your instructions were great! I thought the nurungji would be great for desert so I added a bit of honey to it! YUM! The Sungnyung was delicious! It really finished the meal on the perfect note! Thank you thank you!! :)
I always make rice “the old way.” Always have, always will :)
Anyway, I love cooking exotic foods. I have been making brown rice to use with my dieting and love it. I made that kimchi of yours and love it, first time I tried it and that got me started into preserving foods via fermentation, and of course Kimchi is one of those.
I use for almost everything, even in places I normally use Mexican type hot sauces. It is fantastic, to say the least.
Then in reheating rice (though I cook a lot, some things I make a lot of so as to have it ready anytime I want it. I make a large pot of rice then put some in the frig in a food bag and the rest in bags in the freezer. For cooking my brown rice just for the heck of it I decided to brown the rice first in a skillet with a bit of olive oil to help conduct the heat, then put it in the large pot to cook. This added another dimension to the rice flavor which I really liked, kind of a nutty quality and taste. I tasted it plain without anything other than the added salt in cooking it. I absolutely loved it and had a hard time staying out of it. Then in reheating it I still liked it. I had some which seemed to have too much water in it so when I heated it up I left it in longer to dry some. It was much better. Then… the next time I did same except added some olive oil (very little) to it and let it brown. Man, heaven was at my door. I loved it. So I have been heating it then adding olive oil, browning it some then turning it. Not a thick layer of rice, only abut an inch thick. Turning it when brown, heating more, stirring.
This morning I placed some rice in the skillet and got online, forgetting about my rice. It was just plain brown rice and I had not added any olive oil to it yet. I smelled it scorching and went back, took it off the fire, took a fork and tasted it to see if it was still usable. It was OK, though some of it was totally scorched black. I turned it and finished browning the rest of it. This was without the olive oil added. It was OK, but not as good as just browned and with olive oil added.
As I was eating it with some Kimchi I made from regular cabbage being as the store I was at did not have napa, I was sitting at my PC so I wondered what would show up if I googled scorched rice… and lo and behold, your site was one of many listing scorched rice :)
Reading your recipe for nurungji I knew I was on the right track. Anyhow, being as it seems the way I make it with a teflon skillet and using a bit of olive oil seems much superior to your method I thought I would share it with you. Try it, you will love it, plus made in a teflon skillet (much easier than a pot) it just pours out with absolutely no problem at all, no sticking, no residue, don’t even have to wash the skillet afterwards :)
This “comment” is for you, though you may post it if you wish, I just thought you might like to add this to your personal cooking pleasure.
To simplify this :
Using a small amount of oil (about one tsp for 4 cups of rice) heat in a skillet or pan, mixing a few times, cook until most rice turns brown. Then cook as regular, for me that is 1 1/2 times water for rice. For white rice cook for 20 minutes, water just simmering. For brown rice same or slightly more water simmer for 40-45 minutes. It will always be done nice and fluffy but nothing scorched, pot easily cleaned.
J W (Sancho)
Thanks for your wonderful site, I will be trying more of your recipes.
That’s great, Sancho! Thanks for telling me about your rice. Sounds like you are a super-passionate cook!
Maangchi ssi, are you telling me that the way I make rice all the time is a thing? I’ll be telling my parents that now.
It’s totally a thing! lol
I am currently attending culinary school in Austin and one of my classes I need to make and present a dish to potential employers at a chef’s table event. I am making my mothers Kalbi recipe, but I wanted to make it my own. I intend to change the way this dish is traditionally eaten by making it like a taco.
My question is, would it be a good idea to make nurungji and form it like a taco shell and then stuff it with meat, veggies, and red pepper sauce?
I am worried that nurungji will not have the desired texture needed to pull this dish together. Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas, if nurungji is not a good choice, what would be good to use for a shell to eat Kalbi.
Alan
Waaa,, this dish is similar with Indonesian dish! But we use small pot and the result turn up like a coconut shape without lid.. And we usually eat it with fried dried salty fish or cuttlefish with green chilly .. Its very yummy! I hope u can try it ^^
Thank you for this video, but can you tell me how you cook your purple rice? I know it’s cooked with black rice, but in which relation? I tried it about 3-4 times and I still haven’t found a good ratio… XDD thank you (^.-)
could you make haemul jjim as your next video?
I love how the rice comes out when I prepare it this way! Some of my Korean friends have even asked me to teach them how I make my rice on the stove, and I point them right back to you :) The only thing I haven’t gotten straight is how to adapt this process to making more rice. How would the cooking time on the stove change if I were to make more rice? I need to make around 6 cups of cooked rice for a family dinner, and I assume that I would keep the same rice to water ratio. Would I have to soak the rice longer before cooking as well? Thanks for your help and for the wonderful videos!
Dearest Ms. Maangchi, your recipes are all so precious! Please show us your recipe for flower crab soup!
Oh gosh, just watching this makes me hungry for rice! I have never been able to get the burnt rice out of the bottom of my pot like that, but I’ll keep trying, because I really want to eat nurungji and the tea. I just saw a recipe from a Vietnamese cook who used nurungji-like rice to top a salad – she added some spices to the crispy rice and used it like croutons.
Was your kimchi from your onggi?
Thank you for your recipes!
Kerri
This looks so tasty!! But my mom will have my head if I damage her pot :X
How easy is the pot to clean after making the tea? Does it clean easier after the tea (compared to just after making burnt rice), or is there anything I can do to make cleaning it easier? I want to make this but I don’t want my mom to be mad at me >.<
no problem! : ) Use a wire scrubber to remove the tough stuff.
Nice! Reminds me of the Persian tah dig. Speaking of burnt rice, is there’s a recipe similar to the tah chin? You know… rice baked in an oven? Well, I suppose dolsot bibimbap would be similar, albeit not the same method!