Shrimp porridge

Today let’s make a nutritious 1 bowl meal, Korean shrimp porridge! A spoonful of soft, mild, savory porridge goes down so smoothly. Also, chewing bits of shrimp is delicious and fun. This video is filmed during a recent trip to Montauk, where I got some fresh high quality shrimp!

Porridge is important to Korean cuisine and we have a lot of porridge recipes. The reason we like it so much is because it’s easy to make, satisfying, delicious, restorative, and can easily feed a lot of people. And because it’s so agreeable and goes down so easily, Koreans often serve it to people recovering from surgery or illness. The simplest kind of porridge to make is just with rice and water, but this one I’m showing you today is much more savory. You could replace shrimp with clams, mussels, scallops, or abalone.

This porridge needs only 1 cup of rice but it feeds 3 to 4 people! It’s perfect for a low carb diet.  It will be a great dish for weekend breakfast, I guarantee everyone will love it.

Ingredients

Serves 3 to 4

• 8 ounces shelled, deveined, and washed shrimp, chopped
• 1 cup short grain rice, washed and soaked in cold water at least 30 minutes
• 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 small onion (about ½ cup), peeled and chopped
• 1 medium carrot (about ½ cup), peeled and chopped
• 8 cups water
• 4 green onions, chopped
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce (or soup soy sauce, or salt to your taste)
• 2 sheets dried seaweed paper (gim, aka nori)
• 2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds, ground

Directions:

Toast and crush gim (seaweed paper):

1. Hold one edge of a sheet of gim and wave it over a low flame or electric burner. Keep it moving so it doesn’t burn. Turn the gim periodically to toast it evenly. If it catches fire, just blow it out and continue until the color changes and the gim is very crisp.
2. Put the toasted gim in a plastic bag and crush it into small pieces. Set aside.

Make porridge:

1. Heat up a large pot over medium high heat. Add the sesame oil, garlic, and onion. Stir with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes until the onion turns slightly translucent.
2. Drain the rice and discard the water. Add the rice to the pot and stir for 2 to 3 minutes until the rice turns a little translucent.
3. Add the shrimp and cook for 1 minute until it starts turning pink.
4. Add carrot and water.
5. Stir, cover, and cook for 20 minutes over medium high heat. If it boils over while cooking, stir it a bit and crack the lid.
6. Turn the heat down to medium low. Cover and cook for another 10 minutes.
7. Stir the porridge, add the green onion, and slowly drizzle in the beaten eggs. Don’t stir, just cook for a minute until the egg is set.
8. Stir in the fish sauce (or soup soy sauce, or salt). Remove from the heat.
9. Ladle the porridge into individual serving bowls. Sprinkle with the toasted, crushed gim and ground sesame seeds. Serve immediately.