Instant Pot Chicken Congee for Spleen Support

Relieve internal dampness and heal your spleen with a cozy cup of Instant Pot Chicken Congee. Creamy, warming, and nutritious, this healthy congee recipe is your secret to wellness.  It’s a simple one pot Chinese meal made in the pressure cooker with only 5 minutes of prep time.

The combination of nourishing job’s tears, azuki red beans, and jasmine rice along with spleen qi loving ginger, mandarin orange peel (chen pi), chicken, and bone broth, works together to strengthen your digestive system and boost immunity. Best of all, it makes over 10 cups of a delicious Chinese congee porridge for you to enjoy throughout the week.

Your spleen thrives on warm, cooked foods that are easy to digest, which is why we created this nourishing Instant Pot Chicken Congee just for you. Whether you enjoy this porridge as a warm breakfast, a quick lunch, or a hearty dinner, it’s sure to satisfy.

Rice – We used jasmine long grain white rice. When the rice cooks down, it creates a creamy broth texture to complement the red beans and other ingredients. You can also use short, grained white rice. Please do not use basmati rice or instant rice. You will not get that creamy consistency you are looking for. We have not tested the recipe with sticky rice, brown rice, or forbidden black rice.

Azuki Beans (Red Beans) – As you may have read our balancing warming and cooling foods article, azuki beans are neutral in energy making them perfect for anyone. They are very mild and nutty in flavor making them a perfect addition to sweet desserts like snow skin mooncakes or savory addition to a porridge congee.

According to TCM, these magical dried beans can benefit the body by removing dampness and strengthen the kidney and spleen. If you can’t find azuki beans, don’t sweat it. You can easily substitute red beans with dried kidney beans or cooling green mung beans.

Job’s Tears (also known as coix seed, Chinese Pearl Barley and more) have a delicious earthy and nutty flavor and are slightly cooling in nature. They are used often as a dietary supplement to boost the spleen function and to remove dampness from the body. (1) You will need to go to an Asian market or shop online to find job’s tears. If you cannot find this ingredient, you can substitute with more red beans or uncooked pearl barley.

Chicken – We used finely chopped chicken breast just purely because that is what we had on hand. Feel free to use bone in chicken thighs or legs but remove any fat or skin first before adding it to the Instant Pot. After the congee is done cooking, remove the chicken from the bones and shred and add it back to the congee soup.

Aromatics and Flavoring Ingredients

Ginger - Peeled and sliced if you want a more mellow flavor. If you want a more pronounced ginger flavor,mince finely.

Chicken Bone Broth – either homemade or store bought to boost your gut health.

Mandarin Orange Peel – Dried (chénpí, 陳皮) can be seen drying in baskets everywhere in Hong Kong because they are used to treat digestive issues and relieve dampness and phlegm. It is believed that the longer the peels age the more intense the flavor and their medicinal effects.

We just went with a fresh mandarin orange peel with pith removed knowing that this would be an easy ingredient for you to find. Alternatively, you can add 1 – 2 droppers of Root + Spring’s Aged Tangerine Peel Herbal Tincture and stir into your congee bowl just before serving.

Chinese Red Dates (jujubes) – They add a pop of natural sweetness and are nourishing to the spleen.

Goji Berries (Chinese wolfberry) We also added a tablespoon on goji berries because it is part of our goji berries and red dates herbal tea mixture. However, these are completely optional.

Dried Shiitake Mushrooms – Earthy and so delicious! However, the reason why we added them to the Instant Pot Chicken congee was to help remove accumulated dampness in the body. (2)

How to Make Congee in an Instant Pot

This is a basic overview. Please scroll down to the recipe card for detailed instructions.

• Rinse rice, job’s tears, azuki beans, red dates, and shiitake mushrooms well.

• Add the above ingredients into the instant pot and add in chicken, chicken bone broth, ginger, and mandarin orange peel. If you wish, you can add in 2 chicken bouillon cubes for extra flavor.
• Close and lock the instant pot. Set the porridge function for 40 minutes high pressure.

• Allow natural release for at least 10-15 minutes and then carefully vent.
• Once the metal lock button falls, carefully open the lid. Add in salt and white pepper to taste, stir, serve up a bowl and add your favorite toppings and enjoy.

Asian Congee Toppings

• Green onions
• Fried shallots or garlic
• Soy sauce (coconut aminos or tamari sauce to keep gluten free)
• Sesame oil
• Jammy boiled 6-minute eggs or a fried egg
• Extra ginger
• Garlic chili oil
• Cilantro
• Fried tofu
• Stir fried veggies (garlic pea shoots, bok choy, Chinese broccoli (gai lan), spinach, etc.)
• Leftover proteins from yesterday’s dinner
• Chinese Pickles or fermented things like kimchi
• And more…

What is the Difference Between Congee and Porridge?

Congee (also called Jook in Cantonese) is an Asian soup made with cooked down rice as the base. Whereas a porridge can have other types of cooked down grains such as oats, millet, barley, or corn instead of rice. Our Instant Pot Chicken recipe is both a congee and a porridge because it includes both rice and job’s tears for the grain.

The Role of the Stomach and Spleen in TCM

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the stomach is responsible for digesting the food and the spleen’s function is to transform the nutrients and transport the qi (our Life Force) and blood to nourish the body.

The goal of TCM is to keep your body’s Ying and Yang in balance to prevent illness. However, if your body does not get the nutrients it needs to function, it starts to shut down. We could almost say that your spleen is center of health because it can cause both physical and emotional imbalances if it cannot perform its vital role.

If there are no changes to your routines, diet or even the weather outside, everything can stay in balance. However, come late summer, everything starts to change, and the balance is lost. This is time to reground us and prepare our bodies for the next season.

Late Summer Spleen Health 

Late summer corresponds to the earth element. It’s an important time of the year to strengthen the stomach and spleen.

Living in a damp environment and/or suffering from spleen qi deficiency are hard on your body and digestive health. If your weakened spleen cannot move the fluids, you may feel extra sluggish, a feeling of heaviness in the limbs, bloating, foggy brain, increased mucus and much more.

3 Main Causes of Dampness in TCM

First, your body must deal with Mother Nature’s environmental factors like the extreme heat, excessive rain, and its evil brother humidity. If you spend a lot of time in a rainy or humid environment, the body may not be able to keep up with its role to remove the fluids, resulting in dampness in the body.

Don’t even get us started on Hong Kong’s super humid summer weather! It’s so hot and humid you can’t breathe so all the businesses run their air conditioning (air con) so high you can see your breath. This is so hard on your body and the shock of the temperature and humidity changes sends your ying and yang into havoc.

Secondly, to combat that heat and humidity you may have been enjoying far too many cold foods like raw salads, ice cream and iced beverages. If you already have a spleen qi deficiency, eating or drinking cold foods and fluids makes it even more difficult for your spleen to transport the nutrients to where your body needs it.

The stomach and the spleen must work extra hard to heat, transform and transport these cold foods and beverages. If you already have a weakened spleen, it can’t perform its job correctly. This can cause extra stress on the body resulting in increased dampness or phlegm. In addition, certain diet choices like dairy, processed foods, alcohol, gluten, fried foods and eating large amounts of mushrooms can also cause internal dampness. Think more warm and nourishing meals like Roasted Butternut and Carrot Soup.

Lastly, let’s not forget about the emotional component of excessive worry. Excessive worrying about things you cannot change stresses out the spleen. When your spleen qi is weakened, it cannot perform to role of transporting fluids well. This may result in extra internal dampness in the body.

Food is Medicine

Long gone are the days where you pop a pill for this, that, and everything. Living through chemistry is not a very healthy option. The side effects alone are enough to keep you sick.

Your health starts with prevention! As a clinician, we can validate that it’s much easier and cheaper to keep things in balance to prevent illness BEFORE it happens. Listening to your body’s clues, eating seasonally, and taking the time to cook nourishing meals for yourself are some of the best tools in your health toolbox.

Harnessing the power of food as medicine is an effective way to recover from long-term illness, boost your immunity before the kids are back to school, and maintain health and vitality as you age.