What is Fried Porridge? 炒粥是什么

Have you heard about or tried fried porridge?

Oh my, what oxymoron is fried porridge? 🤔

It is what it is, rice porridge stir fried in a hot wok! 😂

Is it just a gimmick? One of so many food fads that we won't hear about again next year?

No!

Actually, fried porridge has been in the limelight since the early days of social media, when blogging was still a thing, around the mid-2000s to 2010. Fried porridge is still gaining new fans today, and those restaurants that pioneered it are still thriving.

Fried porridge came originally from the north of Peninsula Malaysia - no one challenges that 🫢

From the small town of Serdang, Kedah state with less than 10,000 people population.

The most famous place for it is Sin Aik Kee Fried Porridge Restaurant 易记驰名炒粥 at Jalan Tengah of Serdang.

Sin Aik Kee supposedly invented the dish as a way to salvage overnight leftover porridge. They called it char moay 炒糜, fried porridge in the Teochew language.

How is the dish prepared?

First, the chef fries dried cuttlefish, dried shrimp, ti poh (dried sole fish), salt marinated pork belly, fresh pork, fresh shrimp, diced black mushroom, diced garlic, etc, in lard to extract their flavours and aroma.

Then, pork porridge boiled in bone stock, light soy sauce and thick dark soy sauce sauce are added to the sizzling hot wok with the fried cuttlefish, shrimp, pork, etc inside.

The wet, gooey mixture is vigorously stir fried just like frying a wokful of noodles. It takes a great deal of elbow grease, more than when frying noodles to fold and flip the heavy, wet concoction in the hot wok.

This process superheats the porridge and deeply infuses it with the smokey, toasty flavours and aroma from the fried cuttlefish, shrimp, etc.

The gooey concoction in the hot wok must be vigorously and continually stir fried and tossed to prevent it from getting burnt which would spoil the dish.

There is no wok hei in the rice grains of the porridge itself but smokiness and toastiness from ingredients are deeply infused throughout the porridge.

The steamy hot fried porridge is dressed with aromatics like coriander, chives, scallion, fried shallot, pork lard croutons, etc just before serving.

Does it work? I mean, is it as enjoyable as say a plate of well fried hor fun or black (Kuala Lumpur style) Hokkien mee (KL dai lok keen)?

Yes it is, if the smokiness and toastiness of the umami ingredients are intact and also pervade the entire body of the porridge. The piping hot dish with depth of umami savoury and sweet flavours plus smokey toasty wok hei is memorably delicious!

But not, if the dark sauce and umami ingredients are insufficiently smokey and were merely "stirred" 捞 into the porridge.

The best place to try fried porridge is in Serdang, Kedah where the dish was invented.