Cantonese Rice Plates (碟头饭)

Three - reasonably easy - options for 'big plates of rice with stuff on them', straight from lunch counters in Guangdong.

• Click here to jump to ‘Saucy Beef and Egg’

• Click here to jump to ‘Saucy Chicken and Shiitake Stir Fry’

• Click here to jump to ‘Spam, Hot Dog, and Fried Egg Plate’

So… you know those cliché, food bloggery, white people “rice bowls”?

As people interested in the cultural dimension of food, there’s always something a little odd scrolling through Instagram and seeing them pop up. They sometimes feel like… an anachronism for 2024. They’re always these haphazard mishmashes of relatively random ingredients from random pockets in Asia – Chinese style stir fried vegetable, Japanese style boiled eggs, Korean style canned tuna salad… all squirted with a generous helping of Thai chili sauce.

I know that they’re the 21^st century culinary equivalent of a 1950s tiki bar.

And I guess much like a well prepared Singapore Sling, I also… can’t help but actually really like them.

I mean, it’s certainly true that, at times, the recipes in said blogs are about as culturally grounded as the costume design in the movie Aladdin. But for me, I can’t help but enjoy the style of eating. Because the standard Chinese way to go at rice – small bowl, dishes transferred bite by bite from a main serving plate – is a great system, of course. But often I find myself drawn to larger bowls of rice… wanting to smother it with something saucy, wanting to devour the rice together with my dish in singular glorious bites.

Luckily for me, my American rice preferences are, of course, well covered in China as well. At most varieties of Chinese ‘fast food’ lunch spots - whether they be canteen-style buffets, Gaijiaofan platters, or Longjiang Pork Knuckle rice joints - a ‘big bowl of rice with stuff on top’ is practically… the norm. When I first moved to Guangdong, it was this style of meal that first made me fall in love with Cantonese food - in particular, a sort called Dip Tau Fan (碟头饭):

Dip Tau Fan in Guangdong

So. A Dip Tau Fan is basically… a rice plate - the term literally means “rice topped over a plate”. You can find practically anything in Dip Tau Fan form, though there’s a number of classics (a few of which we’ll cover today).

But by far the most iconic are roast meat platters:

These are actually the OG Dip Tau Fan. In the early 20th century, they were a popular choice among Guangzhou’s ngaan dim - working class eateries that sprouted up to fill the city’s hungry laborers in between morning and afternoon shifts. Among these ngaan dim, one variety was a ‘cured meat shop’, lap mei faan pou (腊味饭铺) - as explained by the 1926 travel guide to Guangzhou, 《廣州快覽》:

卽苏沪之小饭店，随处皆有房室污秽。物价极廉，乃苦力等餐集之所。

The eating situation is similar to Suzhou and Shanghai. There are filthy little spots everywhere. Prices are extremely low and it is a place where coolies gather for meals.

然晏店中有称腊味饭铺者，地方较洁，专售腊味饭，或兼牛奶莲子茶等。

However, there’s a type of shop called a Cured Meat shop. They are relatively clean places and specializes in selling Cured Meat Rice. They also have milk and lotus seed tea.

间亦有兼售酒菜者，惜费之上等人亦每趋之。

Some of them also serve alcohol and other dishes. People that have money are willing to go there.

腊味饭价目有八仙，半毫，四仙，三种。其餘各种价目，店内有表张掛备客指点

There are three portion sizes for the cured rice: eight sin, half hou, and four sin. For other items, the prices will posted in the store.

Okay, so early 20th century travel writers were pretty classist. Prejudice aside, the DNA of Dip Tau Fan remains much the same in the modern day, though over the years roast meat increasingly took the spotlight over cured meats.

And so… if you’re up for a project? Opting to serve your favorite Cantonese roast meat recipe over rice might just be a… fantastic idea when serving for an international audience. A potential way you could structure things:

• Drizzle a bit of scallion oil over the rice, followed by a touch of seasoned soy sauce. Instructions for both are below.

• Depending on your roast meat, have a bit of dipping sauce on the side: e.g. mustard and sugar for roast pork belly, ginger-scallion sauce for chicken, plum sauce for duck.

• Serve alongside a bit of blanched vegetable. Instructions below.

• Optionally serve alongside a salted or fried egg.

The thing is, Cantonese roast meats are pretty infamously difficult to execute at home - at least to standards that you would expect from a restaurant. You can obviously make a tasty approximation at home… but no matter how far up you opt to go, each roast meat is its own mountain to climb.

So instead, we wanted to show you three other Dip Tau Fan choices - stuff that’d be easier to execute, even on a weeknight.

Saucy Beef and Egg (滑蛋牛肉饭)

I know that ‘beef-plus-egg’ is a combination that strike some people as a touch… odd.

So let’s get this out of the way:

It shouldn’t. It’s great. I mean, a fried egg is one of the burger topping greats, up there with cheese, bacon, and caramelized onions. A Steak and Eggs next to a Bloody Mary is a top tier brunch choice.

If I had to guess, a lot of people in the west compartmentalize eggs as ‘breakfast food’, which certainly makes cultural sense if you think on it for a second. Still, breaking that compartmentalization can lead you to some delicious places: in a Cantonese context, beef scrambled egg is a classic. Ditto with classic banquet dishes like West Lake Beef Soup:

Left, Beef Scrambled Eggs (滑蛋牛肉); Right, West Lake Beef Soup (西湖牛肉羹), courtesy Made with Lau

This specific dish is, interestingly, perhaps something about halfway between the above two dishes. It even shares a name with the above scrambled egg (滑蛋牛肉), and perhaps developed as the sauciest possible extreme that a scrambled egg could go. It’s a bit like an… egg drop sauce, and is just awesome with rice.

Ingredients:

• Eggs, 2. Half a white will be used in the marinade below.

• Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ¼ tsp. To season the egg.

• Lean beef, e.g. loin 150g. Cut thin into ~2mm sheets.

• Marinade for the beef:

  Salt, 1/4 tsp

  Cornstarch (生粉), ½ tsp

  Soy sauce (生抽), ¼ tsp

  Dark soy sauce (老抽), ¼ tsp

  Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ½ tsp.

  Sodium carbonate (碱面) -or- Kansui (枧水), ⅛ tsp. We used sodium carbonate in the video. It is very alkaline and tenderizes the beef. If unavailable to you, you can make it yourself by baking baking soda at ~130C for 45 minutes. Kan Sui (枧水) - Chinese Lye Water - is a direct substitute.

  White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), 1/8 tsp

  Egg white, ~½ white. From the eggs above.

  Water, 2 tbsp

  Oil, ~1/2 tbsp

• Aromatics:

  Ginger, ~1/2 inch,. Minced.

  Scallions, 2. White and green parts separated. White part minced, green parts sliced.

• Sauce for the stir fry:

  Stock, 1.5 cups. Preferably a Chinese style stock. A western style chicken stock would be okay too so long as it’s not very aggressive with the herbs.

  Salt, 1/4 tsp

  MSG (味精), 1/4 tsp

  Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 1/4 tsp

  Sugar, 1/2 tsp

  White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), 1/4 tsp

• Slurry: Starch (生粉) 3 tbsp, mixed with water, 3 tbsp. Preferably, use potato or tapioca starch over cornstarch, as those starches will hold the sauce better.

• Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tsp. For use while stir frying.

Process:

Crack two eggs, separately reserving roughly a half a white for the beef marinade. To the remainder, add in about a ¼ tsp Shaoxing wine and beat well. Set aside.

Thinly slice the beef into 2mm sheets. Marinate with ¼ tsp salt, ½ tsp cornstarch, ½ tsp Shaoxing wine, ¼ tsp soy sauce, ¼ tsp dark soy sauce, ⅛ tsp sodium carbonate -or- Kansui, ⅛ tsp white pepper powder, and two tablespoons of water. Mix well, then mix with about a half tablespoon of oil.

Mince ~½ inch of ginger. Separate the white from the greens from two scallions. Mince the white part and reserve with the ginger. Slice the greens and reserve separately.

Then, prepare a sauce for stir frying. To a cup and a half of stock, mix in ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp MSG, ¼ tsp chicken bouillon, ½ tsp sugar, and a ¼ tsp of white pepper. Separately, prepare a slurry. Mix three tablespoons starch - preferably potato or tapioca starch - with three tablespoons water. Set aside.

To stir fry, first give the beef a quick pass through oil - i.e. a brief shallow fry. In a wok, get 1 to 1.5 cups of oil up to 140C over a medium high flame. Add the beef, and cook until visibly ‘done’, ~30 seconds. Remove and drain. Dip out all the oil except for one tablespoon.

Over a medium low flame, fry the minced ginger and scallion white in the oil until they’re fragrant, ~30 seconds. Swirl in ~1 tsp of Shaoxing wine. Stir, then add in the pre-prepared sauce and get it up to a boil. Then, add in your previously fried beef, and once it’s back up to a boil, swap your flame to low.

Now thicken with your slurry. Drizzle in the mixture bit by bit, making sure that it’s not over thickened, as your sauce might have reduced more than ours. It should be thick, like a thick soup, but not have a ‘snotty’ consistency. Then, drop in your egg, also bit by bit - pour a bit of egg over your spatula, and flick it into your soup (doing a bit of a Jackson Pollock impression), aiming for the empty spots. Once it’s all in, swap the flame back to high and allow the egg to start to set.

Once it’s just barely begun to set, ~30 seconds, pull the mixture from the bottom up, in an attempt to sort of ‘layer’ it. You do not need to be obsessive. Once the egg is completely set, shut off the heat, and sprinkle over the remainder of the sliced scallion.

Chicken and Shiitake Stir Fry Plate (滑鸡饭)

So right. You can see the combination of chicken and dried shiitake cutting across a number of Chinese cuisines, although I personally can’t help but associate it most with Cantonese. However, in Guangdong home kitchens you’ll usually find it stewed or steamed together - rather than stir fried.

You could maybe think of this dish as the restaurant, ‘fast food’ stir-fry joint version of said flavor combination:

Ingredients:

• Dried shiitake mushrooms (冬菇), 2.

• Water, 1 cup.

• Seasoning for the soaking liquid:

  Salt, 1/8 tsp

  MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp

  White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), 1/8 tsp

  Soy sauce (生抽), 1/2 tsp

  Sugar, 1/2 tsp

  Oyster sauce (蚝油), 1 tsp

• Marinade for the mushrooms:

  Salt, 1/8 tsp

  Sugar, 1/8 tsp

  MSG (味精), 1/8 tsp

  Soy sauce (生抽), 1/4 tsp

  Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1/4 tsp

• Chicken thigh, 375 grams. Cut into 1 inch chunks.

• Marinade for the chicken:

  Salt, 1/4 tsp

  Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 1/4 tsp

  Sugar, 1/2 tsp

  Soy sauce (生抽), 1/4 tsp

  Dark soy sauce (老抽), 1/8 tsp

  White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), 1/8 tsp

  Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1/2 tsp

  Cornstarch, 1/2 tbsp

  Oil, ~1 tbsp

• Aromatics:

  Ginger, ~1/2 inch. Sliced into sheets.

  Scallions, 2. White and green parts separated, both cut into sections.

• Slurry: Starch (生粉) 1.5 tbsp, mixed with water, 1.5 tbsp. Preferably, use potato or tapioca starch over cornstarch, as those starches will hold the sauce better.

• Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tsp. For stir frying.

• Toasted sesame oil (麻油), 1/2 tsp. To finish.

Process:

Soak two dried shiitake mushrooms in cool water - at least four hours, but overnight would also be okay too.

Then after that time, squeeze out any excess liquid from the mushroom. Pour the mushroom soaking liquid into a separate bowl - this liquid will form the foundational flavor of the dish. At the bottom will likely be a touch of sediment - you can discard the ‘sandy’ couple tablespoons at the bottom, and top up with water.

Season the soaking liquid with ⅛ tsp salt, ⅛ tsp MSG, ⅛ tsp white pepper, ½ tsp soy sauce, ½ tsp sugar, ½ tsp and 1 tsp oyster sauce. Mix well and set aside.

Snip the stems off the mushrooms, then dice them up into about 1 centimeter chunks. Marinate with ⅛ tsp salt, ⅛ tsp sugar; ⅛ tsp MSG, ¼ tsp soy sauce and ¼ tsp Shaoxing wine. Mix well and set aside.

Chop 375 grams of chicken thigh into one inch chunks. Marinate with ¼ tsp salt, ¼ tsp chicken bouillon, ½ tsp sugar, ¼ tsp soy sauce, ⅛ tsp dark soy sauce, ⅛ tsp white pepper, ½ tsp Shaoxing wine, and ½ tbsp of cornstarch. Mix well, then mix in about ~1 tbsp of oil to coat. Set aside.

Slice ~½ inch of ginger into sheets. Separate the white from the greens from two scallions. Cut the white part into ~1 inch sections and reserve with the ginger. Slice the greens into ~1.5 inch sections and separately reserve.

Prepare a slurry of 1.5 tbsp of starch - preferably potato or tapioca starch - with 1.5 tbsp of water.

To stir fry, we’ll again first give the chicken a quick pass through oil - i.e. a brief shallow fry. In a wok, get 1 to 1.5 cups of oil up to 170C over a high flame. Fry the chicken until cooked through - about one minute - then drain and dip out the oil.

Then, swirl in a tablespoon of oil, and then go in with the ginger and the scallion whites. Over a medium-low flame , fry those until fragrant, ~30 seconds. Then add in the mushrooms and fry those until they’re fragrant, ~2 minutes. Then up your flame to high, swirl in a teaspoon of Shaoxing wine, and give a brief mix.

Add in your pre-prepared sauce. Bring it all up to a boil, and boil for about a minute to infuse it with a bit more mushroom flavor. Add the chicken and boil for another two minutes to absorb a bit of said flavor. Then swap the flame to low, and drizzle the slurry in in a thin stream to thicken. Add the remainder of the scallion greens, and drizzle with a ½ tsp of toasted sesame oil.

Spam, Hot Dog, and Fried Egg Plate:

Okay, so I’m already foreseeing a number of y’all skipping this choice out of its… apparent junkiness. I mean, it’s not health food, to be sure.

It is, however, classic Cha Chaan Teng - Canto-western diner - fare. And if you’re cooking for a Cantonese person that grew up in Hong Kong or mainland Guangdong, there’s a good chance that this dish’ll elicit a smile. In Steph’s words, “this dish tastes like all the stuff you wanted to eat growing up, but weren’t allowed to have”.

It’s also a great chance to cover some ground just in case you did want to go the aforementioned Cantonese-Roast-Meat route with your rice plate. Because in a lot of ways, you could perhaps think of this as a continuation of that tradition: only instead of roast meat and Cantonese sausage it’s… spam and hot dog. Outside of (obviously) the main, the other components of the plate are more or less constant:

(1) Seasoned Soy Sauce

Note that there’s a few different varieties of seasoned soy sauce - it’s the type of thing where often every restaurant will have their own mix. Besides what we’ve listed below, Maggi seasoning, oyster sauce, and scallion oil are three other quite common additions.

Ingredients:

• Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tbsp

• Fish sauce (鱼露), 1 tsp

• Salt, ⅛ tsp

• MSG (味精), ⅛ tsp

• Sugar, ½ tsp

• Water, 1.5 tbsp

Process:

Mix the above ingredients well.

Then fry up… whatever you’re frying up. Spam, hotdog, egg, whatever. Dip out the cooking oil, but no need to wash the pan. Add the sauce, bring to a rapid boil. Remove and reserve.

(2) Scallion oil

We didn’t use scallion oil in the accompanying video, mostly to keep things easy and potentially weeknight-able. That said, it’s quite common to see drizzled onto the rice, especially for this sort of platter.

Ingredients:

1. Peanut Oil (花生油), 1 ½ cups. You could also use a neutral oil like corn or sunflower, but the taste is really nice if you go with a 100% unblended peanut oil.

2. Scallions (葱), ~10 springs. Cut into 2-3 inch sections.

3. White onion (洋葱), ~1/4 onion. Sliced.

Process:

Over a medium flame, fry the scallion and the onion in the oil until the latter begins to get golden brown, ~7 minutes.

Strain and set aside. You will like had extra.

To Assemble the Plate:

Lay the rice over the plate and drizzle about a half a tablespoon of the scallion oil over the rice. Add your other components - spam, hot dog, fried egg. Drizzle the seasoned soy sauce to your liking over your proteins and vegetables, ~1 tbsp. You can drizzle a touch onto the rice as well.

Blanched Side Vegetable

To complete the plate for pretty much any of these plates. Ultimately this is quite up to you, though for the video we opted for lettuce.

• Lettuce -or- your vegetable of choice, ~50g per plate. Other common choices would be napa cabbage, baby bok choy, and Choy Sum.

• Salt, ¼ tsp.

• Oil, 1 tsp.

Get a pot of water up to a boil and add in a bit of salt (about ¼ tsp) and oil (about one teaspoon). Blanch the vegetable - 10 seconds for lettuce, 60 seconds for napa, baby bok choy, and Choy Sum. Remove, but don’t rinse as you want the oil to cling to the vegetable.