Congee

01

Rice cooked until it disappears

Cantonese congee is judged first on the base: smooth, fragrant and thick enough to coat a spoon.

At its simplest congee is rice and water, about one part to ten, simmered until the grains swell, split and dissolve into a smooth, pale porridge. Hong Kong congee cooks put the regional differences simply: northern Chinese eat plain congee with side dishes, Teochew congee is more like a rice soup, while Cantonese cooking puts the congee itself at the center. A good bowl keeps a little bite from the rice, has an even consistency and smells of the grain. A traditional Cantonese base is simmered for about four hours, until it is almost as smooth as a rice paste; people outside Guangdong often find it too thick and prefer to see the grains.

The English word is not Chinese at all. According to Merriam-Webster, congee comes from Tamil kañci, “water from cooked rice.” In Chinese the word is zhou, 粥; in Chaoshan, as in classical Chinese, it is mi, 糜.

Sources [4][5][6]

02

Shenggun and lou fo: the two kinds

Every Cantonese congee shop sells two kinds, and the menu tells you which.

Lou fo juk, 老火粥, “old-fire congee,” has its ingredients added to the base while it is still cooking, so they melt into it: dried fish and peanuts, or dried greens and pork, are classic. Shenggun juk, 生滚粥, “raw-rolled congee,” starts from a finished base; raw fish, meat or liver is dropped in and cooked to order in a small pot at a rolling boil, so it stays tender and gives its flavor to the bowl. Shenggun is the style Cantonese diners prize most, and it is what most congee shops make.

Trusty Congee King in Wan Chai, the first congee shop in the MICHELIN Guide Hong Kong and Macau’s Bib Gourmand list, shows how far the base can go. When it opened in 2000 its broth was made from five or six kinds of fish weighing 18 catties in all, with raw rice added and cooked for four hours; crucian carp is the only fish it names. Because congee kept warm grows thicker by the hour, the shop cooks two or three batches two or three times a day. Its bestseller is scallop and pork liver congee, the scallop left half-cooked, and diners order a plate of crisp grass-carp skin, taken from the back of the fish, on the side.

Sources [4][6]

03

Boat congee on the Pearl River

Ting zai juk, “little-boat congee,” was sold from boats.

It was made by the Tanka, the boat people who for centuries lived on the rivers and coast of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian and were long barred from settling on land, wearing shoes or marrying land dwellers; the Qing removed their status as a debased caste in the Yongzheng reign. At night along the Xihao canal and Lychee Bay in Xiguan, flower boats pulled up to the bank, and the congee boats among them flew a yellow flag with a large character 粥 on the stern. The Guangzhou scholar Huang Tianji remembers them from his childhood: a young woman rowing at the stern calling “Boat congee! Raw-fish congee!”, an older boatman cooking at the bow, customers eating in their own boats or under the trees on the bank, and the boatman saying sing wai, “thank you,” as the boat slid off.

The first boat congee was whatever the boat had caught that day, fish, prawns, crab, clams and snails all in one pot. Shops on land copied it and fixed the recipe: fish slices, roast duck, jellyfish, lettuce and fried peanuts, later shrimp, pork intestine, char siu and puffed pork skin, served with scallions and crisp fried wafers. Huang gives the secret of a good bowl: a base made by cooking the rice in pork-bone stock, and raw fish laid in the bottom of the bowl so the boiling congee cooks it. Guangzhou tells two legends about congee and virtue: a boat girl named Jinshui, taught by a carp she had set free to sell fish congee to pay for her father’s medicine, and a scholar whose gratitude gave scholar’s congee its name. Huang calls them tall tales that say something true about the city’s values.

Sources [2][3]

04

Chaoshan baimi and a table of pickles

In eastern Guangdong congee goes the other way: thin, clean and eaten with a dozen small plates.

Chaoshan people call plain congee baimi, 白糜, white mi, an older word found in ancient dictionaries, and many of them eat it at two meals a day, even after a banquet. Sheng Hui, who married into a Chaoshan family, describes the method: plump northeastern pearl rice is boiled hard until the grains burst, which the Teochew call “opening the bud,” then simmered gently and, once done, left covered to steam in its own heat until a skin of rice oil forms on top, thick enough to lift with chopsticks. That skin is what Chinese medicine calls rice oil, and the Qing physician Wang Mengying wrote that it could stand in for ginseng broth. Chaoshan baimi is meant to be thin, not thick like Cantonese congee. Sweet-potato congee, made with the local red-skinned Houlonghong sweet potato, is the home favorite, homely enough to serve as a courting line: would you come home and eat sweet-potato congee with me?

The habit runs deep. Chaoshan tradition credits Wu Fugu, a Northern Song scholar, with promoting congee as the way to keep well; from the Qing dynasty on, as the population grew and grain ran short, cooking plain congee that tasted good and still filled people up became a household skill.

The point of baimi is what comes with it: zaxian, 杂咸, “assorted salty things,” of which there are more than a hundred kinds. Market stalls sell them in tiny portions, five kinds for five yuan. Salted mustard greens are pickled on the day the big mustard plants are cut, salted twice and seasoned with galangal. Olive vegetable starts with olives crushed to draw out the astringency, fried, then simmered with mustard leaves over a low flame for ten hours. Dongcai, the preserved cabbage that also goes into claypot congee, is cabbage hearts fermented with salt and garlic for eight months, a method that came from Tianjin. The most prized is caipu, salted radish, one of the “three treasures of Chaozhou”: with a plate of radish omelet, a local saying goes, three bowls of congee are not too many. Caipu kept for fifteen years or more turns black and oily; such old caipu sells for several hundred yuan a jin, and a pot of old-caipu congee in a Chaoshan restaurant costs more than a hundred.

Congee with something added is called fangmi, fragrant congee. Its base is made from rice just cooked and drained, so the grains stay separate, a method with hard times behind it: a poor family gave the drained rice to whoever did the heavy work, and the women and children drank the thin liquid left behind. The most famous fangmi is claypot congee. According to a Guangdong cookery history, Chaoshan cooks learned the claypot from the Cantonese in the Republican era; after 1978 claypot congee became the business Chaoshan migrants most often opened in Guangzhou, in deep two-handled pots big enough for a table. The rice goes into stock, is boiled and then stirred constantly so it does not catch, “there is no trick to congee, just thirty-six stirs,” and finished with preserved Tianjin cabbage, dried shrimp, white pepper and scallion oil. Seafood fills the pot: snakehead, prawns, mud crab, oysters added only at the last minute.

Each town has its own. In Puning, fish congee is cooked to order and regulars rank the cuts: the head first, then the belly, then plain slices, with pork jerky, sand worms, dried shrimp and mushrooms added. Chenghai makes a congee with crisp crackling left from rendering lard, and there is one cooked with salted squid.

Sources [1][3]

05

Congee and rice rolls for breakfast

In Guangzhou, rice rolls with shenggun congee is what youtiao and soy milk are in the north.

Breakfast shops sell a plate of rice noodle rolls with a bowl of congee as a fixed set, because, as a Guangdong cookery history puts it, people want something liquid in the morning. In 2026 a Honglicun branch in Shenzhen charged 12 yuan for a bowl of lean pork and greens congee and 19 yuan with a plate of egg rice rolls; at a Guangzhou morning market in 2025, a bowl of boat congee cost 8 yuan. Congee is also late-night food: Shantou is known for its night congee, eaten on summer evenings with braised meats, cold poached fish and raw-marinated crab.

Two bowls of Cantonese congee in Shenzhen, 2026

Our own photographs from two meals in Shenzhen in 2026: century egg and pork congee at Tao Tao Ju, and lean pork and greens congee at Honglicun.

Sources [1][3][8]

06

How to order

Choose the kind, then the topping, then something crisp to go with it.

Ask whether the shop’s congee is shenggun: a raw topping cooked to order should arrive tender, the liver still soft, fish slices just set. Century egg and pork is the safest first bowl; boat congee gives you a little of everything; fish slice congee shows off a good base. Add something crisp, fried dough sticks, crisp fish skin or a plate of rice rolls, and eat it hot, because congee thickens as it cools. In a Chaoshan restaurant, order a pot of baimi and choose the pickles, or a claypot congee for the table.

Sources [2][4]

07

Century egg and pork congee at home: the quick version

Sources [6][7]

08

More for a Cantonese morning