Feeling lazy and uninspired yet craving comfort food … folks, your answer is baked cheese rice. Featuring fragrant, savoury rice crowned with a blanket of gooey, bubbling cheese, this hearty dish will be an instant hit in your household.
And nope, you don’t have to spend hours in the kitchen creating complicated sauces from scratch or whipping up oily fumes from fried rice!
A history lesson on baked cheese rice
Based off the idea of a traditional casserole, a French dish in which meat is slow-cooked in the oven, baked cheese rice is a defining comfort food for Hongkongers. The dish originated as “baked pork chop rice” which comprised a layer of melted cheese over a tomato-based sauce, a deep-fried pork cutlet and egg fried rice. Tai Ping Koon, one of the oldest “soy sauce Western” restaurants in Sheung Wan district, was one of the first restaurants to serve it.
Then in the 1930s, Japan saw the emergence of “doria” or rice gratin, which replaces the tomato sauce with bechamel. To make bechamel, you need to mix flour, milk and butter into a thick sauce over low heat – a process that sounds easy enough but is in reality tricky to master. Swiss chef Saly Weil, the first master chef at Hotel New Grand in Yokohama, was the inventor.
If you’re a lazy cook (like me) reading all that, you’re probably thinking OMG, that’s a freaking lot of work!
Worry not!
My baked cheese rice recipe saves time & delivers maximum flavour!
That’s because I cut out the most time-sucking component of the dish: making the sauce. In the place of tomato and bechamel, I use mayonnaise. Oh and I don’t fry the rice either.
For this to work, there is a caveat. Your choice of protein is important. You want to use a strong flavoured and fatty protein like luncheon meat, lapcheong, bacon or smoked duck. Fatty cured meats render out a lot of oils when they are slowly cooked, and this fat is loaded with flavour.
Now, all you have to do is mix your cooked white rice with the rendered fat. Coating each grain of rice with the flavour-packed oils turns them into little umami bombs.
At this point, the rice runs the risk of being a little dry. Add some mayonnaise. Don’t worry about it tasting weird; you won’t even tell it’s there because you’re using strong-flavoured meats. What you want from the mayonnaise is the additional moisture it provides.
Finally, add your mixed vegetables, transfer everything to a tray, top with a layer of cheese, pop the lot into the oven, and wait for magic to happen.
My baked cheese rice is so easy you can even do this on weekdays. The entire process translates into an active cooking time of 10 minutes, at most. The rest of it is just waiting for the rice to cook and the cheese to melt in the oven. Sap sap sui (i.e. “very easy” in Cantonese)!
If you enjoy rice dishes, I think you’ll like my garlic fried rice as well.
Easy Baked Cheese Rice
Equipment
- Rice cooker
- Frying pan
- Ovenproof tray
Ingredients
- 1 cup raw rice
- 100 g smoked duck
- 1/2 tbsp cooking oil
- 3/4 cup mixed vegetables (carrot, corn kernels, green peas)
- 1 egg
- salt & pepper
- 1 1/2 tbsp mayonnaise
- 80g shredded mozzarella cheese (or as much as you like)
Instructions
- Boil rice. Let the rice remain in the rice cooker while you prep other ingredients.
- Dice smoked duck into small 1cm cubes
- Heat up a little oil and scramble an egg. Set aside.
- In the same, over low heat, fry the smoked duck cubes until the fat starts to ooze out, and the meat is just starting to brown outside.
- Add the smoked duck, rendered fats and all, to your rice in the rice cooker. Toss to coat each grain with the oils.
- Add mixed vegetables, scrambled egg and mayonnaise. Combine well.
- Taste for seasoning. Add salt and pepper if necessary and mix well.
- Transfer the rice mixture into your baking tray.
- Scatter as much mozzarella cheese as you like on top. The more mozzarella you put, the more your cheese will pull!
- Pop into preheated 180 C oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until cheese is golden and bubbly.
Notes
- Do feel free to add aromatics like garlic and onions. I'm just being super maximum lazy here because the smoked duck and the cheese will already do all the hard work where flavour is concerned, so I've done away with even aromatics.
- I personally like smoked duck but again, do experiment with other proteins. If you're using raw meat, just season and pre-cook your meat before making the dish.