WHAT'S COOKING?

Crunchy and tasty

Unlimited Lugaw (Porridge) Philippines

Unlimited Lugaw (Porridge) Philippines

‘Unli’ or unlimited is the fad these day. Originally, the word unli was used by the restaurants and food chains, from bottomless drinks up to unlimited rice.

But if you are looking for the real ‘unlimited’ food trip, Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) is the place to visit. Aside from different stalls and budget meals, the PUP is known as home of unlimited lugaw.

For P 8.00, you can have your bowls filled with lugaw as much as you can, just bring back your bowl to the vendor and they will serve you another bowl of steaming hot plain porridge. If you want meat on your lugaw, you have to pay for another bowl and it is not counted as refill. The usual costumers of this garage like eatery are students and drivers of public transportation on the place like tricycle and jeepney drivers.

You can have laman (meat) on your lugaw or side dishes like hard boiled egg, fried tofu, and lumpia rolls. Aside from offering unlimited lugaw, the unique thing about this lugawan is that they actually offer verities of Cow’s body organs. You can have half eye or whole, heart, and testicles.

According to my friends in PUP, the record of bowl of lugaw finished by a single person on the said lugawan is 13 bowls.

Next time you’re in manila, try to visit the unlimited lugaw store at PUP.

Note: just always finish your lugaw and up to the last drop. If you don’t, you have to pay for another bowl of lugaw you won’t able to finish.

Rice pot

Since rice is the staple food of Filipino families, how to cook rice is one of the first lessons we have to learn. There are many ways of cooking rice and its different verities, but the most the common way of cooking it is stemming. Though it looks so easy, many still struggle on cooking perfect stemmed rice. Here are some techniques on cooking it.

1.      Pour two (2) cups of uncooked rice in a coking pot. Rinse the rice with water for two (2) to three (3) times if needed.

2.      After washing, put water on the pot with rice. The usual cooking proportion is ‘one is to two’ (1:2).

3.      Place it on the stove. Set the fir on medium fire and cover it.

4.      Wait until the mixture boil and uncover it. Lower the fire and let it simmer.

5.      After three (3) to five (5) minutes or after letting it simmer (please do not stir), set fire to the 'lowest' possible heat then place the cover back. Within eight (8) to 10 (ten) minutes time, your rice is now ready to serve.

Note: if you’re cooking for a bigger family, just do the same procedures but check the capacity of your cooking pot to know how many cups of rice it can hold and cook.

You can also add pandan leaves (Pandanus amaryllifolius) to enhance the aroma and flavor of your steamed rice.