List of Different Types of Porridges

Porridge may look like a simple meal but there are many different variants of porridges around the world. Here are some of them:

• Congee is Asian rice porridge. If it is a plain rice congee then it is eaten as a side dish but if the other ingredients are added while preparing (meat, fish, and flavorings), it can be a main course.
• Bubur ketan hitam is a dessert made of black glutinous rice porridge which is mixed with coconut milk and palm sugar or cane sugar. It is common in Indonesia and Malaysia.
• Frumenty was a porridge made of boiled, cracked wheat and popular in Western Europe during the medieval times. It was eaten with milk, eggs or broth. Sweet variants were made with almonds, currants, sugar, saffron and orange flower water.
• Gruel is a thinner variant of porridge made of cereal (oat, wheat or rye flour, or rice) which is boiled in water or milk. It can even be prepared without cooking.
• Hasty pudding is porridge of grains cooked in milk or water. It is often made in Britain of wheat flour while in United States, hasty pudding is made of corn.
• Močnik is a porridge from Slovenia. It is prepared by cooking cereals like a buckwheat, corn, wheat, millet, rye, or oats in milk, cream, or sour cream.

• Cream of Wheat is a porridge mix made from wheat semolina (purified wheat middling of durum wheat). It is an American brand and it was first manufactured in 1893 by wheat millers in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
• Oatmeal is porridge made from oats. It can be eaten as a meal alone or it can be used as a material for making other meals like oatcakes, as stuffing for poultry, as a major ingredient of haggis and other.
• Sadza a cooked cornmeal. It is a staple food in parts of southern and eastern Africa especially in Zimbabwe. It is usually made with white maize and eaten from a communal bowl, although it can be served on separate plates.
• Kasha is a term for any kind of porridge made of cereal in Central and Eastern Europe and the United States. It is usually made of wheat, barley, oats, millet and rye.
• Tsampurado is chocolate rice porridge from Philippines eaten as snack or dessert. It is prepared by boiling sticky rice with cocoa powder. It can be served both hot or cold and with added milk and sugar.
• Rubaboo is a porridge made of made of peas, corn or both, mixed with grease of bear or pork and something for a thickening agent like flour or even bread. It was a traditional food of native peoples of Canada like Métis.
• Polenta is porridge made of boiled cornmeal. It can be eaten with milk or additionally baked, fried or grilled. It originated in Northern Italy, France, and Switzerland.
• Juk is a porridge made in Korea. It is often made of grains like cooked rice, beans, sesame, and azuki beans. Other Eastern Asian countries also have juk but under different names and with local variations. It is eaten warm as a morning meal.
• Grits is ground-corn porridge traditional prepared by Native Americans and which survived until today as a traditional food. It is eaten as a part of a breakfast and is very similar to polenta.
• Chatang is a Chinese porridge made of sorghum flour, broomcorn millet, proso millet flour and glutinous millet flour. Skillful cooks can prepare chatang so when a chopstick is inserted into it, it will stand vertically.