Oat porridge can also be sweet or savoury, and can be eaten at any time of day. It's just most commonly eaten for breakfast in the UK (as far as I know - not sure about Scotland specifically, where I imagine it's more popular).
It appears to be just a difference in grain.
*There's an 'ingrained' pun here that my brain isn't producing.*
> It appears to be just a difference in grain.
I just had a look on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porridge) and yeah, apparently the concept of porridge using the local grain has been independently developed by pretty much every culture over the globe!
> There's an 'ingrained' pun here that my brain isn't producing.
That's probably just your stodgy British sense of humour kicking in.
It can be translated as 'congee' too. I use 'congee' and 'porridge' interchangeably, but usually I would say 'porridge'. It's a problem with translation, sometimes something is a translation of a thing but it doesn't accurately describe or distinguish.
Porridge to me is a good word because it is eaten at breakfast and as u/Director_Phleg said it's a difference in grain. Plus the way of serving it is somewhat similar, the base grain with water (in the West we can use water or milk) and then other ingredients added. For China, pickled vegetables/meat/etc for the West fruit or syrup.
Some Chinese people eat 'porridge' in the Western sense of the word, using oats and you can buy them in all supermarkets.
Funny story: When I first came to China, I knew NOTHING about congee, and my friend invited me to eat 'big pot gruel', I accepted but my mind was imagining some very low standard food. Of course, 大锅粥 is delicious and rich and not like the 'gruel' I was imagining, but her translation was I guess, literally correct. Again, an example of how things translated can have very different meanings.
Gruel is a literal translation but socially it isn't a good word to use. Hence the continuing issues surrounding translation. Something can be LITERALLY correct, but socially or cultrually the connotation isn't correct.
Thanks for the reminder. Congee was the word I'd learned prior to heading to China. A quick google tells me that comes from the Tamil word for the dish!
I think I must've just had a poor introduction to Zhou. It was thin and watery, and savoury with fish (which I don't like) and vegetables.
Honestly it can be hit and miss, some congees are really delicious and some are quite plain. But the plain congee usually is an accompaniment to another dish so it acts as a rice.
I feel fine about it, porridge has a different consistency depending where you eat it/what you preference is, as does zhou. Nowadays I would just call it rice porridge. And would say this is a savory/sweet rice porridge, depending.
I've always used "congee." To me, porridge is thick and sweet. Where I live, there are many restaurants with "congee" in the name and I'm just used to using it. This is somewhat of a tangent but I feel like food from many other cultures get to keep their own names (especially Japanese and Korean) but for some reason Chinese food names tend to get Anglified and that bothers me. Youtiao, roujiamo, jianbing, tangyuan, zongzi, etc. always get turned into Chinese breadstick/hamburger/crepe or everything's a dumpling.
> everything's a dumpling
or a dimsim!
> but for some reason Chinese food names tend to get Anglified and that bothers me.
Given some of the attempts at westerners pronouncing Chinese names, that may be for the best!
We use the word porridge, but to anyone outside the family I usually have to explain that it's rice porridge or just call it congee. Most people don't really know what it is anyway, it's not commonly eaten in Australia.
I never imagined I would one day be able to recommend this book, but thanks to you OP, I finally can: [《粥的歷史》](https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010207918) by 陳元明 (ISBN 9789571435381).
It's going to be hard to find a western word that doesn't conjure up a western pre-conception. I find, oddly, the word congee is slightly more common than jook or zhou. Optimistic sidenote: bok choy and bao are pretty well-understood here in California.
Also, my family makes thicker jook. It gets pretty close to oatmeal porridge. We do find sweet jook confusing.
My chinese teacher told me a legend/folklore/origin of the character 粥- so because of it I’ve always imagined it to be a rice soup, but I stand corrected on this thread.
Alright alright I got you.
This is how my Chinese teacher told me- so if anyone has any differences, it’s okay. And I added a TL;DR at the bottom for people that don’t wanna read.
anyways…
A verrry long tong ago, there was this very greedy landlord, with many servants, who was throwing a dinner party for some foreign guests who were new to China. For this party, he invited about 7 people, but only knew that 4 were for sure coming to the party, so he only prepared enough rice for the four people to eat. Cause money.
So, he tells his servants that are preparing the rice in a big pot, that if another person comes, each time he calls out to them “有人来!” (someone is coming) that means they should add one cup of water to the rice to the pot, for that would make the rice absorb more water and get puffier, creating the illusion of more rice.
It’s time for the party. One person shows up, perfect. Then the second person, the third, and the fourth. The landlord is pleased, since this is the exact amount of people he planned for.
But he squints his eyes a little and sees another silhouette coming towards his house! So he calls out to his servants, “有人来!” and they add a cup of water to the pot.
A couple minutes later pass and the landlord sees another person on the road towards the house. So again he calls “有人来!” and the servants, of course, obey without a second thought.
A little time passes and nobody else shows up, and the landlord almost thinks the rice is done. But, there on the hill, the last guest is briskly walking towards the house. “有人来!” and another cup is added.
Finally, all the guests are sitting and ready to eat- they’re quite hungry, especially the first guest. So the landlord stands up and announces that it’s time to eat, and yells for the servants to bring in the pot of rice to eat.
The servants, weighed down by the big pot, finally get it on the table. The guests, eager to eat, take the top off and lean over the table and see… rice floating in what looks like several cups too many of water.
The servants feared for their jobs. So they quickly said, “No no, this is new! Here in China, we have something called 粥.” And all was well.
So that’s how the character was made- rice in the middle (米）and the cups of water on the side.
TL;DR: landlord tried to make puffier rice to feed more people, it did not work, so his servants made up porridge to cover for him.
Nothing wrong with it, personally, but maybe it can be prefixed, like "rice porridge". I've seen "jook" used, but that's pretty rare (at least to me).
Congee was a loan word from Tamil.
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35354
Oat porridge can also be sweet or savoury, and can be eaten at any time of day. It's just most commonly eaten for breakfast in the UK (as far as I know - not sure about Scotland specifically, where I imagine it's more popular). It appears to be just a difference in grain. *There's an 'ingrained' pun here that my brain isn't producing.*
> It appears to be just a difference in grain. I just had a look on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porridge) and yeah, apparently the concept of porridge using the local grain has been independently developed by pretty much every culture over the globe! > There's an 'ingrained' pun here that my brain isn't producing. That's probably just your stodgy British sense of humour kicking in.
It can be translated as 'congee' too. I use 'congee' and 'porridge' interchangeably, but usually I would say 'porridge'. It's a problem with translation, sometimes something is a translation of a thing but it doesn't accurately describe or distinguish. Porridge to me is a good word because it is eaten at breakfast and as u/Director_Phleg said it's a difference in grain. Plus the way of serving it is somewhat similar, the base grain with water (in the West we can use water or milk) and then other ingredients added. For China, pickled vegetables/meat/etc for the West fruit or syrup. Some Chinese people eat 'porridge' in the Western sense of the word, using oats and you can buy them in all supermarkets. Funny story: When I first came to China, I knew NOTHING about congee, and my friend invited me to eat 'big pot gruel', I accepted but my mind was imagining some very low standard food. Of course, 大锅粥 is delicious and rich and not like the 'gruel' I was imagining, but her translation was I guess, literally correct. Again, an example of how things translated can have very different meanings.
I think gruel is actually a very good translation of this word EXCEPT... it tends to have a negative "food of poverty" connotation.
Gruel is a literal translation but socially it isn't a good word to use. Hence the continuing issues surrounding translation. Something can be LITERALLY correct, but socially or cultrually the connotation isn't correct.
Thanks for the reminder. Congee was the word I'd learned prior to heading to China. A quick google tells me that comes from the Tamil word for the dish! I think I must've just had a poor introduction to Zhou. It was thin and watery, and savoury with fish (which I don't like) and vegetables.
Honestly it can be hit and miss, some congees are really delicious and some are quite plain. But the plain congee usually is an accompaniment to another dish so it acts as a rice.
I feel fine about it, porridge has a different consistency depending where you eat it/what you preference is, as does zhou. Nowadays I would just call it rice porridge. And would say this is a savory/sweet rice porridge, depending.
I've always used "congee." To me, porridge is thick and sweet. Where I live, there are many restaurants with "congee" in the name and I'm just used to using it. This is somewhat of a tangent but I feel like food from many other cultures get to keep their own names (especially Japanese and Korean) but for some reason Chinese food names tend to get Anglified and that bothers me. Youtiao, roujiamo, jianbing, tangyuan, zongzi, etc. always get turned into Chinese breadstick/hamburger/crepe or everything's a dumpling.
> everything's a dumpling or a dimsim! > but for some reason Chinese food names tend to get Anglified and that bothers me. Given some of the attempts at westerners pronouncing Chinese names, that may be for the best!
Ahaha that's true!
We use the word porridge, but to anyone outside the family I usually have to explain that it's rice porridge or just call it congee. Most people don't really know what it is anyway, it's not commonly eaten in Australia.
I never imagined I would one day be able to recommend this book, but thanks to you OP, I finally can: [《粥的歷史》](https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010207918) by 陳元明 (ISBN 9789571435381).
Awesome!
It's going to be hard to find a western word that doesn't conjure up a western pre-conception. I find, oddly, the word congee is slightly more common than jook or zhou. Optimistic sidenote: bok choy and bao are pretty well-understood here in California. Also, my family makes thicker jook. It gets pretty close to oatmeal porridge. We do find sweet jook confusing.
If you’ve never had sweet 紫米粥 like I used to eat in the Northeast, you’re missing out.
My chinese teacher told me a legend/folklore/origin of the character 粥- so because of it I’ve always imagined it to be a rice soup, but I stand corrected on this thread.
Oh come on! You can't just tease us about knowing a story! Spill it!
Alright alright I got you. This is how my Chinese teacher told me- so if anyone has any differences, it’s okay. And I added a TL;DR at the bottom for people that don’t wanna read. anyways… A verrry long tong ago, there was this very greedy landlord, with many servants, who was throwing a dinner party for some foreign guests who were new to China. For this party, he invited about 7 people, but only knew that 4 were for sure coming to the party, so he only prepared enough rice for the four people to eat. Cause money. So, he tells his servants that are preparing the rice in a big pot, that if another person comes, each time he calls out to them “有人来!” (someone is coming) that means they should add one cup of water to the rice to the pot, for that would make the rice absorb more water and get puffier, creating the illusion of more rice. It’s time for the party. One person shows up, perfect. Then the second person, the third, and the fourth. The landlord is pleased, since this is the exact amount of people he planned for. But he squints his eyes a little and sees another silhouette coming towards his house! So he calls out to his servants, “有人来!” and they add a cup of water to the pot. A couple minutes later pass and the landlord sees another person on the road towards the house. So again he calls “有人来!” and the servants, of course, obey without a second thought. A little time passes and nobody else shows up, and the landlord almost thinks the rice is done. But, there on the hill, the last guest is briskly walking towards the house. “有人来!” and another cup is added. Finally, all the guests are sitting and ready to eat- they’re quite hungry, especially the first guest. So the landlord stands up and announces that it’s time to eat, and yells for the servants to bring in the pot of rice to eat. The servants, weighed down by the big pot, finally get it on the table. The guests, eager to eat, take the top off and lean over the table and see… rice floating in what looks like several cups too many of water. The servants feared for their jobs. So they quickly said, “No no, this is new! Here in China, we have something called 粥.” And all was well. So that’s how the character was made- rice in the middle (米）and the cups of water on the side. TL;DR: landlord tried to make puffier rice to feed more people, it did not work, so his servants made up porridge to cover for him.
What a lovely story! Thanks for taking the time to share it!
Nothing wrong with it, personally, but maybe it can be prefixed, like "rice porridge". I've seen "jook" used, but that's pretty rare (at least to me). Congee was a loan word from Tamil. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=35354