Bonito Peanut Porridge

I believe everyone has heard of bonito and peanut porridge. This porridge is made of bonito and peanuts and tastes quite good. Let me introduce this porridge to you.

Bonito Peanut Porridge

This is what the adults said to us every time we ate this porridge when we were young. This is not a threat, but a piece of advice to the children who didn't know when to be full. (To prevent us from running around after eating and hurting our stomachs)

“Dried bonito and peanut porridge, don’t feel depressed if you eat it for a thousand times”

This is what the adults said to us every time we ate this porridge when we were young. This is not a threat, but a piece of advice to the children who didn't know when to be full. (To prevent us from running around after eating and hurting our stomachs)

In the countryside, this kind of porridge is only eaten in summer. And it must be in summer when peanuts are harvested. Only when the newly harvested peanuts are used can the most authentic bonito peanut porridge be made.

In the past, transportation in the countryside was inconvenient and there were no refrigerators, so if you wanted to eat something meaty, you had to go to the market during market season, and the adults would go to the market to buy fish and meat.

But this is the busy farming season. Summer harvest begins, peanuts are harvested and dried, early rice is harvested and dried, rice stalks are harvested, and fields are turned over to plant late crops. In the words of my grandmother, "so busy that even winter melons have to rest their feet" (it would be best if the winter melons at home had hands and feet to help with the work.) No one has time to go to the market, so they have to buy what dried food they can store early in the morning for storage. In the era of material scarcity, bonito with the taste of the sea is the best choice. It is delicious whether it is used to make porridge or boiled melon and vegetable soup.

The busy farming season happened to coincide with the summer vacation, so we, the little kids, had to help out. But since my dad was working away from home, there wasn’t much farm work to do. So I often went to help the aunts, and it was a very happy and fun game. The adults picked peanuts from the fields and then drove them back to the big tree in the village, and let the old people and their children help pick them. (As I write, I really want to go back in time)

Every day, the nanny cooked various kinds of "Yancou" (sound, equivalent to today's afternoon tea) so that uncles and aunts could eat when they came back to replenish their energy. "Dried bonito peanut porridge, sugar-coated porridge, salted egg and black bean porridge, fried sugar glutinous rice cakes, and fried thin glutinous rice cakes" were the most common. (Just thinking about it makes me drool)

Hehe, the best way to stop drooling is to buy the ingredients and cook it yourself.

Ingredients: 1 dried bonito, 250g peanuts, 250g rice, 5 slices of ginger, some chopped green onions

Bonito flakes are expensive and hard to buy, so we usually buy whole pieces and break them up at home. For the peanuts, we use the small red-skinned peanuts that my mother grows. They are really fragrant when cooked.

How to make dried bonito peanut porridge 1. Use a small hammer to beat the dried bonito into pieces, wash and soak them for later use

2. Wash and soak the peanuts and set aside

3. Wash the rice and marinate it with oil and salt.

4. Put the dried bonito, peanuts, ginger slices and the water used to soak the dried bonito into the pot and cook for 30 minutes.

5. Add rice and bring to a boil, then simmer until the rice is completely melted. Serve and sprinkle with a little pepper and chopped green onions.

Bonito is a dried fish product that Guangdong people are very familiar with for making soup and porridge. Almost all teahouses and hotels have the famous snack porridge of bonito and peanuts. Bonito is a dried product of cod, a cold-water fish (mainly produced in cold waters). Because it looks like wood, Guangdong people call it "bonito". It has the functions of strengthening the spleen and stomach and replenishing yin and blood.

Bonito is a sacred ingredient for making soup. Delicious bonito must be made from fresh tuna. Due to the Kuroshio, Chenggong Port is one of the few fishing ports on the island that can provide fresh tuna of the day. After the tuna arrives at the port, the head and tail are immediately removed, and the bones are removed. Only the muscles behind the abdomen are used to make bonito. Because there are very few parts that can be used, bonito is very precious. After obtaining the fish meat, it must be steamed first, and it must not be boiled, otherwise the nutrients will be released into the soup, and the meat will rot and be unfavorable for making; after the fish meat is cooked, it is grilled over firewood for more than 10 days. After the water is evaporated, it becomes a dark, hard-as-stone bonito block. When it is eaten, it is cut into thin slices with a machine or a planer, which is the bonito flakes we usually see.

The dried bonito peanut porridge tastes delicious

When buying dried bonito, you should choose those with wide and thin slices, light color, clear and delicate texture, and complete and not broken. It is best to smell the dried bonito slices close to you or put them in your mouth to chew. If the aroma is fragrant and there is no fishy smell, then it is the best. There are also dried bonito slices made from bomb fish on the market. The slices are small and have a fishy smell. The flavor is naturally not as good as tuna dried bonito slices. In addition, you can directly buy dried bonito blocks and slice them with a planer when you get home. However, it should be noted that if the complete dried bonito blocks can be kept dry, they can be stored for 10 years without spoiling. Once they are planed, the dried bonito without adding preservatives needs to be refrigerated to keep it fresh.