Claypot rice - recipes wanted

Can you recommend a good online source for clay pot rice recipes? There’s a restaurant near me that delivers clay pot rice dishes in an actual clay pot, so I have one. It’s a fruit bowl at the moment, but I think it might want to get back to its roots.

They deliver a clay pot?

Clay pot meals are pretty creative on your part and you cannot really mess up. Most often people put the Chinese sausage or Chinese salted/cured duck along with small amount of green vegetable. Chicken meat and mushroom are not uncommon.

What I usually do is to bring the rice with water (usually a teaspoon of oil, but this is completely optional) to boil, then I put in most of the ingredients like sausage and/or cured duck… When it is almost done, then I put the green vegetables because I prefer the green vegetables to be crisp and not overcooked. Some people prefer to add the meats at a later stage when the rice is almost done, and that is fine too – as long as the meats are cooked. Soy sauce and oyster sauce are optional, but I usually put a little soy sauce at the end – before serving.

In this video, they fried the duck and blanch the sausage… these are optional too. Frying the duck will make it a little better, but not necessary. Blanch the sausages only if they are very hard and you have trouble cutting through. Otherwise, if you can cut the sausages, then the sliced sausages will get cooked during the steaming process.

I would say just keep it simple the first time.

Actually, do you know if they actually used that clay pot? Or is it a bland new clay pot which they only used it as a decoration to deliver the meal to you?

The reason is that you should “season/prep” a brand new clay pot before using. Soak the pot in water for 20-30 min before using it the first time. It is simple. Good luck.

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Yep. Here it is:

clay pot

I’m pretty sure they did. The rice was crusted to the bottom, and it’s pretty scorched. The restaurant, A-Wah, is closed, but you can still read about it (and see pictures) here.

Thanks for the video. I’ll be making a seafood & vegetable version, but I think I can figure out the timing.

From your photo, I am not sure if your clay pot is glazed or not. You need to soak the pot in water if it is not or half glazed to prevent cracks when cooking.

It’s glazed on the inside. I appreciate the advice and will soak it.

I like simple. Rice in the pot, add water or chicken broth, then put chicken cubes tossed with oyster sauce and soy sauce on top, some ginger slices, and some green onion pieces. If I have chinese sausage, I add some slices of that too. Soaked dried chinese mushrooms if i have them. Drizzle with a touch of sesame oil. Cover with the lid and simmer until cooked.

This works in a rice cooker too.

How long does rice take in a clay pot? Also, is this type of cooking solely on the stove top? I’m imagining setting a clay pot directly on a gas burner, and it seems a disaster waiting to happen.

I do it on simmer and it takes about 45 minutes or so, but I don’t make a lot at once. I’ve never had issues using my pot on my gas stove, but make sure you soak it in water for an hour or so before cooking. I have the Chinese style clay pot with the lid, very similar to this:

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Clay pot cooking is simple. Try Boogiebaby’s method. I only have gas cookers. My pot is old and am planning to replace it if I come across a nice one.

I was going through my China trips’ photos and found many meals cooked and served in clay pots. Damn, I had a great time eating (cheaply) in China and never did any research to find “best xyz restaurants”. Simply walked straight to the table and checked out what people were eating.

You can see the difference between HK and China in these clay pot meals. Not only the sharp difference in price but also in the amounts and variety of food.
First 3 pics are in HK.

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China

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The intense pollution is no good for me otherwise I would go back. 3 trips were not enough.

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Don’t agree here. I think it depends what you order, I had chicken mushroom claypots rice in Hong Kong, the ingredients covered just like in China. The pot you have ordered in HK was pork fat (?) and Chinese sausages, both very oily, it would be heavy to have a lot of them. Usually Chinese sausages with chicken rice though, never saw just lap cheong alone. Maybe this restaurant was stingy.

Fat is essential in claypot rice cooking. I think charcoal too. Although the home version can do without them. I don’t own a gas stove, nor a Chinese claypot, I tried to make it once with a cast iron pot on induction. Not too bad, I even got a layer of crust. Tried also with oven in a tajine style of claypot, ok but no crust.

The recipe: