Korean Jook, How to Make Rice Porridge Faster and Healthier

When it's cold outside or you actually have a cold, Korean Jook (죽), or rice porridge totally brings the cozy, comfort vibes. This version gets there MUCH faster by taking a shortcut with leftover cooked rice, and is loaded with garlicky, gingery, bone brothy flavor and has more vegetables than most.

_{updated October 2025, originally published 2005}

What Ingredients You Need to Make Korean Jook

Fresh/refrigerator ingredients:

• ½ large onion white or yellow, finely diced
• 2 carrots about ½ cup finely diced
• 4 cloves garlic finely minced
• 1 ½-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
• 2 cups short grain rice cooked
• 4 cups Chicken Bone Broth
• ½ zucchini about ½ cup finely diced
• 4-5 shiitake mushrooms finely diced
• 2 cups cooked, shredded chicken or turkey

Dry/pantry ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon avocado oil
• ½ teaspoon sea salt plus more to taste

Traditionally, Korean jook starts with uncooked short-grain white rice, sometimes partially blended or ground for a finer texture. Short grain white rice is "sticky" when steamed, and when cooked in more water or broth over a long period of time, releases more starch into the liquid, creating that signature creamy, velvety texture.

For this recipe, we're using leftover cooked rice that has been refrigerated (or frozen). Not only does cooked rice speed up the time by completely skipping over the initial cooking time from raw rice, the refrigeration converts some of the starch in rice into resistant starch, making it a better version for blood sugar and metabolic health.

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Food for Afterthoughts

My body has totally surrendered to the evil empire.

I thought that the nazi germ regime that launched a full-scale attack on my body at the end of last year and rendered me utterly, feverishly, lifeless through New Year’s Eve and Day was gone with a very strong defense of Mom’s Soup. Clearly, I underestimated the naughty nazi germs’ strategy, perhaps overestimated my own body’s defenses, because the germs simply went undercover then re-emerged with all new head exploding, innards shooting tactics.

I am still sick.

The last thing you think about when you are sick is what you look like. Okay, maybe it’s the second to last thing because the last last thing I think about when I’m sick is…cleaning my house. I barely clean my house when I am the picture of health.

I think I might even be…sicker. It shows. The tiny of army of very large white blood cells is using every last ounce of cellular energy in my body for resistance. It makes me tired. They’ve turned up the heat in my body to burn the nazi germs out. Two words:

Fee.

Ver.

Fever dehydrates me. Dehydration drains me of what little energy I have leftover from the WBC army surplus. Low- to no-energy incapacitates me. Incapacitation keeps me in bed, which means I don’t get up to brush my teeth, wash my face, or even change the germ-infested clothes that are probably a breeding ground for germ mutation and re-infestation because if I get up, that means I have to get out from under the covers and it is freezing out there in the central-air heated heat of my bedroom. Staying under 27 layers of cashmere and goose down with a fever makes me sweat.

I should shower because I sweat, because that is what people do when they sweat. They shower. But if I shower, the water will be too hot on my overheated feverish body and too cold for my underheated feverish body. I can’t shower, and even if I managed to find the one degree of shower water temperature that is perfectly positioned between warm and cool, I couldn’t take a shower because I don’t have the energy to stand there in the shower for 30 minutes.

I take long showers. When I actually take showers, that is.

I am so sick that I can hardly write. While it may appear that I don’t put much thought into whatever I spew forth onto the Delicious screen, I actually do take time to brainstorm ideas, outline my points, and even try to string the words together in a way that is, you know, witty. I can’t do it today. The mind is willing, but the body is beyond weak. Okay, the mind is pretty weak right now, too. I doubt I will even have the sense to run a spellcheck.

Not being able to blog properly makes me cranky like all hell.

Sickness is not pretty. Bloggers are not pretty. Sick bloggers are an absolute national disaster.

But at least being a sick blogger forces me to cook!

Since my entire family has me on quarantine status for fear of transmitting evil from myself to either my nieces and nephews with their nascent immune systems or my parents with aging immune systems, I have to take care of myself. I got a set of hermetically sealed containers full of Vegetable Soup that was passed off to me in the most germ-free manner possible, but I finished that in three days. They won’t come near me anymore unless I have some voodoo certification from a magical rabbi elf in the Himalayas proclaiming my germ-free-osity. Last I checked, there are no trains to the Himalayas, so I am resigned to making Korean Jook for myself.

Making the jook itself is wash-n-go, but the effort it takes to drive to the market to buy the ingredients, drive back, carry the groceries into the kitchen, put away the things that you had no intention of buying because they aren't related to the cooking task at hand but bought anyway because who goes to the market and doesn't buy a six pack of wine for the 10% discount (?), prep the vegetables, declare a national sanitation project on the chicken, and then finally start the cooking, is a massive hair-do. For a sick person, it's more than just a hair-do. It’s a cut, bleach, re-color, highlight, French twist with Swarovski crystal accents.

Let’s not forget the fact that after the jook cooks, you have to remove the ingredients, strain the broth, then let it chill in the refrigerator overnight so you can chisel away the 1” thick layer of schmaltz that has congealed at the top.

Don’t get greedy. There was no way I was making matzo balls.

I didn't care how the jook looked. I just wanted something. I mean I barely cared that the vegetables were clean. I just plopped everything into a pot, then felt sorry for myself on the couch wearing a tiara and wrapped in a cashmere throw while I let that stuff simmer away until the chicken practically fell off the bone. I heaved the enormous pot toward the sink to strain into a container to go through the de-fatting process. Hair. Do. The soup the next day was absolutely fucking fabulous.

Ugly, but fabulous. I feel like half a million bucks.