Taiwanese sticky rice (油飯)

 

When we were settling into our new apartment at UWP during 3A term in undergrad, one of the things my best friend (and roommate at the time) Jen unpacked was this plastic tub containing an unfamiliar food. The conversation went something like this:

Jen: *opens fridge and places tub in it*
Me: "What's that?"
Jen: "My mom cooked it! Here, you wanna try some?"

At this point I'm speechless because did she just bring a tub of food on a flight all the way from Vancouver and did her mom actually make that all the way back in Vancouver and wait moms packing food for you is a thing, and did I mention IT'S ALL THE WAY FROM VANCOUVER?! (lol my mom never packed me food because she knew I could cook, but Jen also knew how to cook, so...)

Me: "Yes please :')"

So I tried it.

AND IT WAS SO GOOD.

Jen told me that it was called you fan (油飯, literally "oil rice"), and that her mom pretty much just puts whatever in it. I had never heard of the dish before (which made sense, since I was only familiar with restaurant food + Cantonese cuisine at the time), so I was extremely curious as to what was in it and whether it was a popular dish. I remember it having something crunchy like water chestnuts, along with meat and probably mushrooms. And rice, of course—it was chewy and savoury and you could taste every single grain and it was all sorts of wonderful. I had a few bites and felt really bad because I wanted so much more, but didn't want to deprive Jen of the food her mom had so lovingly packed for her haha. So I just kept the memory in the back of my head from then on. I tried looking for you fan at Taiwanese restaurants (and really any other Chinese restaurant) after that, but to no avail.

A couple of years later, after I'd started working at Google, a few coworkers invited me to this monthly group order from a small bakery in the South Bay where literally a bunch of us would place orders on a spreadsheet, and then a few days later a truck carrying our orders would stop by our building and hand out our food in exchange for cash. At first I only saw buns and man tou and beef noodle soup on the menu, so I didn't really expect to get anything other than that. But then I kept reading, and wonder of wonders: aside from all the 包子 and 牛肉麵, they also had 油飯!!! I think I immediately ordered like 2 boxes of it hahaha.

The sticky, savoury, moreish goodness of that you fan propelled me to look for a recipe to make it myself. I scoured the Internet for recipes—yes, I even forced myself to read through the ones in Chinese to make sure I wasn't missing anything—but none of them really talked about how to make it in a very simple one-button rice cooker (which was all I had), so I was left to figure that out myself. I also asked like 5 or 6 different Taiwanese-Canadian and Taiwanese-American friends if their moms had a recipe for it, and every single one of them told me the same thing (yes, even Jen, when I asked her after we graduated): "Nope, no recipe."

Dang it, Taiwanese moms!!!

My most recent iterations of you fan are still nowhere near my memories of Jen's mom's version, but I do think they are still quite delicious and worth making :9 Here is my current recipe; the next time I make it I think I'll actually try adding more crunchy veg like water chestnuts! After all, you can just put whatever in it, right?

Ingredients:

• 3 cups glutinous rice
• ~8 pieces of dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in at least 3.5-4 cups of warm water (keep the water!)
• 1 tbsp dried shrimp (蝦米), soaked in warm water
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce + 1 tbsp for the stir-fry
• 2 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 2 shallots, or around 1/2 cup of onions, sliced
• 1/2 lb. pork loin, sliced into thin strips
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1 cup water chestnuts or any other crunchy veg, sliced
• handful green onions, chopped

Directions:

1. Soak shiitake mushrooms and dried shrimp in warm water for ~30 minutes or until soft.
2. Rinse and drain glutinous rice, and place in rice cooker. Pour a bit over 3 cups of the mushroom soaking liquid into the rice cooker, and add the soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sesame oil. Mix and let the rice soak for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, press the button on the rice cooker to start cooking it.
3. In the meantime, slice up the onions, mushrooms and pork into thin strips. Stir-fry all the remaining ingredients until cooked.
4. When the rice is done, fluff it up with a rice paddle, then fold in the stir-fried pork and veggies (alternatively, transfer the rice to the frying pan you were using to stir-fry the fillings, and fold gently). Serve with chopped green onions and sriracha sauce and enjoy :)

(recipe adapted from It's My Dish)