Three Chinese "Good Over Rice" Dishes
Three really 'xiafan' dishes that could be whipped up on a weeknight.
So this week I wanted to talk about ‘xiafancai’ or “good-over-rice” dishes.
To start out here, I’m going to make a couple wild generalizations, then dial them back.
If you look at a lot of quote-un-quote “Asian” dishes in the West, a lot of them seem to be treated as… rice bowls. I remember back when I went to university, one of our college’s cafeterias had this “Asian stir fry station”. While I’d probably be way less passionate about it if I went back today, that was like the favorite thing for a stoned 19 year old mthmchris to scarf down. You put whatever meats and vegetables you wanted on a little tray, selected a sauce (my favorite was always their jerk chicken lol), they’d cook it up and spoon it all over a bed of white rice. Putting it on rice was the default, because, like… of course. Why wouldn’t you.
And if you look at the vast, vast majority of English language recipes for stir-fries and such online – from Tasty to AllRecipes to SeriousEats – you tend to find the same pattern. This dish presented over rice. Always. I guess for a lot of people in the West, white rice feels… boring. They want something – anything – to give it taste (even the cliché gratuitous squirt of soy sauce).
By contrast, if you look at a sort of bog-standard Chinese meal, rice isn’t treated as the bed to toss all your saucy dishes onto. It’s in its own separate little bowl – it’s a side dish. Something plain to contrast the flavors of the meal, something to reset the palette between bites.
But if you think this’s leading into a Zagat-esque “you’re doing it wrong”, it’s not. Because listen. While smothering things over white rice isn’t the only way to eat, it is a fucking awesome way to eat. And if you look at the way people eat here in China, depending on the dish a sizable chunk of the population’ll use that ‘side rice bowl’ as a plate of sorts to ‘bounce’ food off of from the communal dishes to the gullet. Going further? Especially if you’re just cooking for yourself, that whole stuff-with-a-big-bed-of-rice approach is a great way to make yourself a nice full meal. And it’s a staple for restaurant one person set meals here in China for just that very reason.
Of course, some dishes go better with rice than others. Those that do are described as ‘xiafan’ (下饭), or ‘good-over-rice’ (excuse my crappy translation – more explanation in the notes below). Of course, in the West people tend to immediate equate that with saucy stuff… but man, it goes so much deeper than that. Certain soft vegetables are often great over rice, ditto with certain pickles.
But you know what? This kind of thing’s often a matter of personal opinion. Like, a lot of people here would consider Mapo Tofu to be very xiafan… but I don’t. And that’s ok.
So I wanted to show you three different ‘over rice’ dishes today. Now know that this’s just a couple of a… relatively random assortment of stuff that I personally like over rice, so forgive me if the selection here feels a little arbitrary.
A brief aside on making white rice:
We use a rice cooker to make white rice. Why? Well for a quick primer of why rice cookers are convenient as hell, let me refer you over to this great episode of What’s Eating Dan over on ATK.
The TL;DW is this: that commonly listed rice-to-water ratio? It’s actually variable. All rice actually absorbs water at a 1:1 ratio – all the remainder is to leave room for evaporation. So for something like Jasmine rice, it’s really more “half cup water plus 1:1” than whatever ratio you’re used to. This is why the old finger/knuckle trick works… and also a big reason why rice cookers make so damn consistent rice.
The manufacturer of the rice cooker designs the thing so they know the rate of evaporation, so for a rice cooker you just follow the numbers on your pot and you get perfect rice every time. But even more than that, the convenience of just having your rice cooking in the background – without taking up a burner – is just… key. I know everyone hates ‘uni-taskers’. But cheap rice cookers are cheap. If you like rice enough where you cook it, say, once a month or more (or enough where click into a Reddit post entitled “stuff over rice”)… it’d be an incredibly worthwhile purchase.
Just a few random notes on the rice itself, just in case you’re unaware.
Before tossing in the rice cooker, rinse the rice 2-3 times until the water runs… clear-ish. It’s not going to get clear-clear.
Follow the instructions of your rice cooker.
After the rice is done, fluff the rice. Scoop from the bottom to loosen up the rice – chopsticks are a great utensil for this job, but a fork would be ok too.
Now, we have a sort of fancy Zojirushi rice cooker – it takes a bit longer than most rice cookers, as it pre-soaks the rice and steams it after. In total, it takes about 50 minutes for our rice cooker to make rice, which I thought might be a pretty decent time limit for the upcoming recipes.
See, we felt like the whole essence of an ‘over rice’ dish was something that you’d be able to whip up on a weeknight. So while we do have a (perhaps annoying) tendency to share pretty intense recipes, everything here should be able to be whipped up in well within that time.
Diced Pork with Mushrooms
Ingredients
This is basically a dish that’s in our “Western supermarket club” – i.e. a dish that you can make without access to a Chinese supermarket. Just two things. First, we use a big of dark soy sauce for color, but that’s solely for looks… if you only got Kikkoman handy, use Kikkoman.
Second, we use Chinese cooking wine here (“liaojiu”, i.e. Shaoxing wine), but in a pinch you can really sub that with whatever wine you feel like. Dry sherry is the sub that most people’d call for, but for the small amount here… whatever. Sake, white wine, bourbon, whatever.
Pork loin or chop (外脊肉), 200g. Or any lean pork really. Now we’ll be dicing this, but please don’t sub this with ground pork. Hand diced pork’ll have a vastly superior taste and texture here.
Fresh shiitake mushrooms (香菇), ~eight. Washed and with the stems removed. In hindsight I probably should’ve weighed these for you, but this doesn’t have to be an exact science.
Marinade for the pork: ¼ tsp salt, ½ tsp sugar, ½ tsp cornstarch (生粉), ½ tsp liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒); ¼ tsp soy sauce, preferably dark (老抽), 1 tsp oil to coat. Just a bog standard marinade here. We added a touch of dark soy sauce for color, but regular soy sauce would also work just fine.
Aromatics: ~1 inch ginger (姜), ~3 cloves garlic, ~3 sprigs scallion. For the scallion, we’ll be using the white portion as an aromatic, and finishing off the dish with the green bits. The ginger, garlic, and scallion whites are slightly crushed. The greens are sliced as you’d expect.
Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ~1 tbsp. To be subbed with whatever you feel like if need be. For use while stir-frying.
Light soy sauce (生抽), 1.5 tbsp.
Water, ¾ cup. You could also use stock if you got that handy.
Seasoning: ½ tbsp oyster sauce (蚝油), 1 tsp sugar, ¼ tsp white pepper powder, optional sprinkle of MSG (味精). If you want your end result to be a touch dark, you can also add in ~1/4 tsp of dark soy sauce.
Slurry of 1 tbsp cornstarch (生粉) mixed with an equal amount of water. To thicken.
Toasted sesame oil (麻油), ~1 tsp. For finishing.
Process
High level overview here: dice the mushrooms and the pork, marinate the pork, blanch the mushrooms, fry everything together, add some liquid and thicken into a sauce.
Dice the mushrooms. Make sure the mushrooms are washed and remove the stems. Slice the mushrooms in half horizontally, then slice into small slivers. Ideally working 2-3 mushrooms at a time, align the slivers and get into a dice.
Prep the aromatics. Separate the white portion of the green onion from the green. Slightly smash the white part, the garlic, and the ginger. I like keeping these whole because we’re making something saucy here (you can easily remove later if you like, but I usually only toss the ginger). Slice the green part of the scallion and put in a separate bowl.
Dice the pork. Cut the pork into ~3mm slices, then stack some of the slices and cut into slivers. Then align the slivers and get into a dice.
Marinate the pork. Add all the marinade ingredients except the oil, and give it a good mix. Then squirt the oil in, and give it another mix to coat.
Optional but recommended: blanch the diced mushrooms for ~1 minute. Fresh mushrooms have a bit of an intrinsic ‘grassy’ taste, so we like to get that out. Up to you. Quickly blanch the mushrooms in boiling water for ~1 minute, then shock under running water to stop the cooking process. Once it’s cool enough to handle, squeeze the mushrooms of excess liquid so that they’re not too water-logged when we try to fry them.
Stir fry. So as always, first longyau: get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in the oil – here about ~two tablespoons – and give it a swirl to get a nice non-stick surface. Heat on high now:
Immediately toss in the garlic and the ginger. Fry for ~15 seconds or until fragrant.
Toss in the pork. Fry for ~1 minute, or until the pork basically looks ‘cooked’
Swirl in that tablespoon of liaojiu wine over your spatula and around the sides of the wok to let it sizzle and quickly reduce
Add the mushrooms. Fry for another minute, or until the exterior of the diced mushroom is dry
Swirl in the ~1.5 tbsp soy sauce. Quick mix
Add in the water. Bring to a boil.
Add in the seasoning. Let it bubble for ~2 minutes.
Add in the slurry. Mix until thickened. Heat off.
Scallion greens, in. Quick mix.
Toasted sesame oil, in. Quick mix. Out.
Serve alongside some blanched or fried veg.
Steamed Squashed with Garlic Black Bean Sauce
So if the first recipe here’s a good example of a ‘saucy’ over rice dish, this’s a solid illustration of a ‘dry’ one. This dish’s a simple steamed squash (usually translated as ‘pumpkin’) with garlic & fermented black soybean sauce.
Ingredients
Ok, before we get started here I have to have a brief aside on that bottled “garlic black bean” sauce that you can get from Lee Kum Kee or whatever.
I… really can’t stand the stuff. Garlic black bean sauce’s just one of those things kinda like whipped cream where (1) homemade is like 1000x better and (2) it’s really easy to make, so there’s not much excuse to reach for the pre-made stuff.
I think if you try it side by side, you’d see that that black bean sauce’s just no real sub for the rich, chocolately goodness that black fermented soybean gives.
Butternut squash (南瓜), ~350g. Or really whatever kind of squash would work. We’re using a quarter of a Cantonese “nangua” which… really looks and feels like butternut squash. But whatever’s convenient. Kabocha, winter squash… whatever.
For the garlic black bean sauce: 5 cloves garlic, ½ tsp salt, 2 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp fermented black soybeans (豆豉), 1 tsp light soy sauce (生抽). The fermented black soybeans – i.e. “douchi”, can be found either online or at most Asian supermarkets.
Oil, 1 tsp. To coat the squash before steaming.
Slurry of ½ tsp cornstarch (生抽) mixed with ½ tsp water. To thicken the juice from steaming into a sauce.
Toasted sesame oil (麻油), 1 tsp. For the sauce.
Process
So high level overview time. Make the garlic black bean sauce by basically pounding it all together in a mortar. Cut the squash into ~1.5 inch cubes, then toss with a bit of oil to coat, and top wth the garlic black bean sauce. Steam, pour out the ‘juice’ it expelled, then thicken that ‘juice’ to make a quick sauce.
Make the garlic black bean sauce. In a mortar, pound the garlic, salt, and sugar together for about ~2 minutes or until the garlic’s broken down. Add in half of your ~1 tbsp of fermented black soybeans and pound for another minute. Then add the remaining beans and give only 5-6 pounds or so (we want to leave some relatively intact for looks, but feel free to just pound them all together if you don’t care). If you don’t have a mortar by the way, you can totally just toss these in a bowl and pound with the butt of your knife – relatively common practice here (China ain’t exactly southeast Asia where a mortar is a household staple).
Cut the squash into ~1.5 inch chunks. Scoop out any pulp or seeds from the squash, and cut of the skin with a knife. Cut down into ~1.5 inch ‘rings’, then stack a couple of those up and cut into chunks.
Transfer to a bowl, and toss the squash with oil. Top with the garlic black bean sauce.
Steam the bowl for 12 minutes. Or up to 15 if you like your squash a bit softer.
Remove, then drain out the liquid that collected in the bowl. That liquid tastes good, so we’ll be making it into a sauce.
Pour the liquid into a saucepan, bring it up to a boil. Add in the slurry, thicken, then top with the toasted sesame oil.
Spoon the sauce back over the squash, mix. Eat.
Lao Gan Ma Garbage Plate
Ok, this last one’s kind of a non recipe.
Take white rice. Spoon over Lao Gan Ma chili crisp in oil. Eat.
I like adding a fried egg too. Whatever method you want. I like tossing ~two tbsp of oil or so in a cast iron skillet, then heating that up over medium-high heat until bubbles form around a pair of chopsticks. Crack an egg in, let it set, shut off the heat. Tilt the pan so the oil pools, then spoon it over the whites of the egg. Once the whites are cooked, I generally pour one spoon of oil over the yolk because I personally like my sunny-side up yolks more ‘gooey’ then ‘leaky’ … but for an over rice dish I want that yolk anywhere and everywhere. Season with salt, or whatever.
For all of these though, you should probably add some green veg to make it a more properly complete meal, so… yeah.
Note on how to blanch vegetables:
In the video we used Choy Sum, which’s probably my personally favorite vegetable for a quick blanch.
So right. Pot of boiling water, squeeze in a touch of oil for a bit of sheen. For Choy Sum, that gets blanched for ~1 minute. The way I (Chris) learned to do crunchy veg like Choy Sum or Baby Bok Choy is to hold the thick stem in the bubbling water for about ~30-45 seconds (I usually do it until my hand gets too hot), then drop it in for 15-30 seconds then drain. Of course, Steph doesn’t bother with that… and she’s a better cook than the person that taught me that anyhow. I just like my blanched vegetable cooked just enough and no more I suppose.
Note on disagreeing definitions in Chinese of ‘xiafan’:
So “xiafan” in an interesting word, because it seems that different people here have different concepts of what the word means.
For some, it means basically anything salty/flavorful that you want to eat a lot of rice with in the same meal. For others (and how we used it here), it means something that you toss on/in your rice and eat it in the same bite. I can’t seem to put together if it’s a regional thing or not. It’s a kind of interesting dynamic because you could theoretically have people from the former group be talking about ‘xiafan’ dishes with the latter without much hiccup, as often there’s a big overlap there.
Either way, probably the most accurate translation of the English concept of “over rice” would be gaifan (盖饭), but that’s generally used in the context of specific dishes.
Anyhow, just a quick aside for the purposes of completeness.