rice porridge

While rice cereal is often the first food of choice when starting babies on solids here in America, it is 10倍粥 (rice porridge) in Japan. It’s a very liquidy congee, and while rice is normally cooked with water at a roughly 1:1.2 ratio, you use a 1:10 ratio at first for your baby, incorporating water at 10 times the amount of rice you are using, to get a very loose consistency. As the baby gets older and more used to solids, you can start lessening the ratio, to make it 1:7, 1:5, 1:4, 1:3 — and the porridge is called 7倍粥, 5倍粥, 4倍粥, 軟飯, respectively, according to whatever the ratio is. It makes sense that rice porridge is a common first food for Japanese babies, since rice is such a staple in the Japanese diet. I grew up eating rice every day, and I’m sure it will become a big part of Mio’s diet as she grows up, too. So this past weekend, we introduced her to her first taste of rice, making 10倍粥.

I started out by washing a half cup of Japanese rice and putting it in a pot, and then added 5 cups of filtered water. I brought the pot to a boil, and then reduced the temperature and simmered it for 30 minutes, covered. Afterwards, I turned off the heat but kept the lid on for 10 minutes, to let the rice continue to cook with the residual heat inside the pot. What resulted was a very mushy rice, but the kernels of rice were still somewhat retained, forming little clumps within the porridge. Traditionally, one usually has to grate the mixture through a very fine metal mesh strainer by pressing it through with the back of a spoon (or using a mortar and pestle to grind it up by hand), to obtain the desired fine consistency, but it seems like an awful lot of work, so I decided to try blending it in the Babycook to see if I could get a more consistent liquid that way.

Sure enough, after pulsating the mixture a couple times, all the clumps were gone and what was left was a very fine, loose rice porridge! Perfect!!!

After reserving a portion to feed Mio, I poured the rest out into daily portions to freeze for future feedings. Easy! 🙂

Mio liked her first taste of rice — she heartily gobbled it all up! (So far, she has liked every food we have introduced to her.)

So for all the Asian mamas out there who want to feed their babies rice porridge, I definitely recommend the Babycook! It makes the process super easy and relatively mess-free!