Friday I made the Dakjuk (Korean-Style Congee with Chicken and Vegetables) from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

A lot of the ingredients for this recipe are familiar to Western cooking: carrot, zucchini, and celery complement the chicken in the congee.

This congee is a little more involved than most so far. The chicken is simmered in water with ginger, scallions, and garlic to both cook the chicken and make the stock. The vegetables are all finely diced (to the size of a grain of rice) and sauteed before adding the rice and stock and cooking to a congee texture. Then the chicken is shredded and added.

I thought the flavors were very familiar to Western cooking, too. It reminded me of chicken noodle soup. Megan said that it tasted like Thanksgiving, but her tone indicated that it wasn’t a compliment. She said that this dish is not her favorite congee, which is significant because she’s already stated that congee is not her favorite.

Probably won’t make this again.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.