Breakfast Cure is congee-inspired
Congee is a miracle food. The only thing that makes it even better is when more people learn about it and can experience all the benefits of eating it themselves.
Good Morning. I’m Karen Taylor, founder of Breakfast Cure. Today I want to talk about how Breakfast Cure is congee-inspired. Congee, or jook (juk), is a traditional rice porridge that’s been eaten widely across Asia for thousands of years. I started eating it for breakfast about 30 years ago when I started Chinese medical school. My nutrition teacher first introduced me to the importance of this medicinal porridge, and my Chineses Herbal professors showed me how to use rice porridge to prescribe herbs for people with weak digestion to improve absorption of the healing nutrients.
The concept is to cook grains with plenty of water, until the grains become indistinguishable from the water, making them easier to digest and absorb. What ignited the fire in me, was trying it, and feeling how different my digestion felt. I noticed that my stomach didn’t hurt at all. There was no vague discomfort, no cramping, no bloating. In fact, I felt a warm, soothing, comforting, nourishing feeling that grew the more days in a row that I ate it.
I grew up in LA in the ’70s. Both my parents worked full-time, but we sat down together every evening for family dinners, which strayed far from the standard American fare on a daily basis. My mom cooked delicious Mexican food once a week and my step-dad made incredible Chinese feasts. He’d been studying with Madame Wong, author of Madame Wong’s Longlife Chinese Cookbook, who offered classes through UCLA extension at the time. I’m left now with only the notes he took and the recipes he cherished for the rest of his life.
Why had it taken so long for me to find out about congee when it felt so miraculous? How had I eaten cold cereal for breakfast all those years? All the people I knew and what they ate for breakfast filled my mind, and I needed to learn more about rice porridge, introduced to me as congee.
Breakfast Cure is the result of my deep dive into the world of rice porridge, years of making traditional recipes whenever I could get my hands on one and find the ingredients. Then, slowly, my own recipes began to evolve. I cooked thousands of batches, creating flavors based on porridge from around the world. My interest continues to be in the medicinal healing properties of the basic, traditional Asian recipe.
The magic is in the soothing nature of this simple meal. With the lens of Chinese medicine, we can see how and why warm cooked foods heal digestion and deliver nutrients even when digestion is far from optimal.
I’ve enjoyed a love affair with slow-cooked breakfast ever since I was first introduced to it. Now, after trying all kinds of combinations to find my favorites that are tasty and healthy, my dream is that Breakfast Cure will not only help others find and embrace the wisdom of warm cooked food but also experience the ease overnight cooking can bring to their mornings. Breakfast Cure is congee-inspired because once I experienced breakfast that felt like a hug, I was forever a fan.