What it is
Sweet potato congee (地瓜稀飯, also 地瓜粥) is white rice simmered in plenty of water with chunks or strips of sweet potato. At congee restaurants it is one of the two usual choices, the other being plain congee (清粥, or 白粥). Neither is eaten on its own. Both come with a spread of small side dishes known as 清粥小菜, 'plain congee and small dishes'.
Where it came from
Before the 1950s a bowl of plain cooked rice was something of a luxury for many Taiwanese families. Rice was a cash crop, grown to be sold, so cooks thinned it into congee and stretched it with sweet potato. Often this was not fresh tuber but dried shreds (番薯籤) kept back for hard times. Struggling households ate it in place of rice until the 1970s, and a thick pot was envied over a watery one. Sweet potatoes were brought to Taiwan in the seventeenth century and grow in poor soil where rice struggles. Many Taiwanese still say the island is shaped like one.
The dish later moved up in the world. Food historian Chen Yu-jen (陳玉箴) found the term 清粥小菜 in newspapers by the 1960s at the latest, and the Ching Yeh restaurant (青葉), opened in 1964, put 'Taiwanese cuisine, congee and small dishes' on its sign. As Taiwan grew richer, coffee houses, Western restaurants and Cantonese places added congee and small dishes to their late-night menus.
How it is made
Rice is cooked in a generous amount of water. Careful cooks add it all at the start, as topping up during cooking spoils the flavour. Sweet potato goes in as chunks or thin strips. Yellow-fleshed sweet potatoes are preferred to red ones, which are sweeter but fall apart and spoil the look and texture. Good shops remove the eyes, keep the cut faces clean and leave the chunks big enough to bite, rather than dicing them small to make the bowl look fuller.
How to eat it
Congee and small dishes are mainly eaten at breakfast and late at night. The side plates are small and mostly salty: pickled cucumber, fermented tofu, salted duck egg, dried radish omelette (菜脯蛋), fried fish, braised pork belly or stir-fried greens. Congee is easy on older people and small children, and many Taiwanese restaurants keep it on the menu for their regulars.
Around Taiwan
- North
- Taipei turned congee and small dishes into a night-out meal. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the shops around Fuxing South Road (復興南路) and Ruian Street were known as 'congee street', full of people carrying on after drinking and clubbing.
