What We’re Cooking This Week: Leftover Rice Porridge with Chicken and Arugula

Leftovers are my favorite ingredient.

Most rice-eating cultures make some kind of savory porridge by cooking rice for a long time with lots of water until it gets thick and soupy and adding various vegetables, meat, eggs, or pickles, like Chinese congee or Korean juk. But you can get something similar much faster using leftover cooked rice. Whether you’ve got short grain brown, aromatic jasmine, or a paper container of takeout, any cooked rice works.

Just combine cooked rice with broth or water and cook until it gets thick and, well, porridge-y. And feel free to improvise. Don’t do dairy? Skip the cream. No sherry? Add a splash of wine or leave it out. Swap the chicken for another protein or leftover cooked vegetables. And all of the ingredient quantities listed are approximate, eyeballed as I threw this together from what I found in the refrigerator.

Recipe

2 cups cooked rice

1½ cups chicken broth

¼ cup cream

1 tablespoon sherry

1 cup leftover cooked chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces

Handful of arugula, roughly chopped

Combine the rice and broth in a saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, and cook, stirring often, until the rice is very soft, about 15 minutes. Add the cream and sherry, and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Stir in the chicken and arugula and let cook for a minute or so. Serve immediately.