Hong Kong Style Sweet Corn Rice (Vegetarian)

This meat-free sweet corn rice is inspired by a typical Hong Kong dish. Using canned corn, it’s a easy-peasy, sweet and delicious one plate meal.

This sweet corn rice was a typical set lunch in cha chaan teng when I was in secondary school. As far as I can remember, a big pile of bright yellow sweet corn sauce was usually paired with either diced meat or fish chunks.

I have never wanted to cook this sweet corn rice by myself. Only when I was looking at the leftover of those corn kernels, I suddenly thought of trying to make this dish. I couldn’t help but praise myself: it’s so close to the authentic sweet corn rice! Not like the restaurant one with creamy white colour, meaning there was tons of slurry, but not corn.

Use Canned Sweet Corn, Not Fresh

For me, canned food doesn’t have to be all junk food, you have to know how to read food labels. Some cans really add unnecessary flavors and preservatives, but some cans simply sterilize the ingredients in the original cans to extend the shelf life.

Like the one I used, the ingredients are only corn and water, and no salt is added. Compared with fresh corn, you have to cook and take out the corn kernels, it requires effort. It’s much more convenient to use canned corn.

Use Soya Chunks to Replace Pork

Along with the vegetarian trend, protein-rich soya chunk is also becoming more popular. The soya meat sold in the market are the products obtained by removing soybean oil from soybean flour and then air-drying. If you make it by yourself, it will be similar to the method in the following video.

In addition to not using pork, I also changed the rice to couscous.

First, it takes longer time to cook rice, and couscous can be ready in less than 10 mins. Second, white rice contains less protein (5 grams/100 grams), and couscous is much better. Take the one I bought as an example , every 100 grams of couscous has 12.5 grams of protein.