One-Pot Rice Cooker Meal with Chinese Garlic Chives (韭菜燜飯)

Cozy, hands-off, and FULL of spring flavor! 🌱 This one-pot rice cooker meal with Chinese garlic chives, bamboo, and cabbage is hearty, satisfying, and perfect for busy weeknights or lazy weekends. 🍚⏰

This series of rice cooker meals with seasonal vegetables is a Chinese riff on Takikomi Gohan (炊き込みご飯), or Japanese mixed rice dish that is made with different kinds of vegetables and proteins and that is usually cooked directly in the rice cooker. One-pot rice cooker meals are such great ways to incorporate your favorite vegetables, make a big batch at once, and have leftover rice for busy weekdays!

Love a low-effort and balanced home-cooked meal?
You might also like the one-pot rice cooker recipe I created for burdock roots, One-Pot Rice Cooker Meal with Burdock Root.

Garlic Chives in Chinese

Garlic chives are called Jiǔ Cài (韭菜) in Chinese.

Where do I even begin with garlic chives? They are super fragrant, available all year round at Chinese supermarkets or Asian grocery stores, and can be made into many yummy dishes that go well with rice, including this one!

Garlic chives, also known as Chinese chives, are in the same genus family as garlic (i.e., Allium), have a strong oniony, garlicky aroma, and, to my knowledge, aren't otherwise related to garlic.

Interestingly, due to their pungency, garlic chives are one of the Five Pungent Roots practitioners in certain branches of Buddhism cannot eat because these plants are believed to induce and increase undesirable emotions like anger or sexual desire (the other four are onions, garlic, leeks, scallions or green onions, and shallots).

Ingredient Notes And Substitutions

Here is a quick overview of what you'll need! Find the printable recipe with measurements below.

• Garlic Chives: The star ingredient of the dish!
• Rice: Growing up in a Taiwanese household, we mostly ate short to medium-grain white rice or brown rice, which is my preference (don't use Chinese sticky rice or glutinous rice!). If you prefer using long-grain rice, like jasmine rice, be my guest!
• Water: The water ratio I usually abide by is equal cups of cold water and rice, or however much water your rice cooking machine instructs, based on the type of rice you use. You can also use vegetarian broth or dashi stock to take this rice recipe to the next level!
• Potato: A starchy vegetable that adds more substance to the dish!
• Peas: Another starchy vegetable that adds a pop of color! I use frozen peas; you can use fresh ones, too.
• Bamboo is a spring favorite and is often paired with garlic chives in Chinese home cooking. I use frozen bamboo, but you can also use fresh bamboo if they are in season.
• Salt: I have tried adding salt directly to the water for the rice, but the whole dish turned out saltier than expected, so I recommend adding the salt once the rice is done cooking.
• Sesame Oil: Add just before serving and mix well before serving!
• Vegetarian Sausage (Highly Recommended but Optional): While it is a far cry from the fatty Chinese sausage or lap cheong (or Là Cháng 臘腸 in Mandarin Chinese), adding a vegetarian protein really helps to increase the satiety of this dish! If you can find them near you, Field Roast's apple sage breakfast sausages would be my first pick, but Trader Joe's vegan Italian-style sausage-less sausages have worked well for me, too! I would use one sausage in the 1x recipe.

Measuring Garlic Chives

I understand that vegetables from different Asian supermarkets come in different sizes, and it's not like everyone has a food scale at home to weigh out exactly how much is needed in a certain recipe. So, on that note, I developed a rule of thumb (literally!) for myself, and hopefully it will work for you, too!

My Handy Rule of Thumb

To eyeball the weight of garlic chives without a scale, here’s my quick trick:
(Disclaimer: I have an average-sized hand but longer-than-average fingers)

• If my thumb easily surpasses my middle finger when holding a bunch of garlic chives (like in the images above), then the bunch usually comes out to be about 60 grams ± 10 grams, which is about what this recipe (1x) calls for.

Did this method work for you? Let me know whether this trick worked for you (or not) in the comments!

How To Make This Recipe: A Visual Guide

Here is a quick visual rundown! Find the full instructions with ingredients below.

Step 1: Prepare to cook the rice in the rice cooker as you normally would.

Step 2: Add garlic chives, potatoes, and peas as the first layer.

Step 3: Add cabbage on top of the first layer of vegetables.

Step 4: How the inner pot looks right after the cooking process is done.

Step 5: Add salt, mix well, and put the inner pot back into the rice cooker to cook under the "Keep Warm" function for another 2-3 minutes.

Step 6: When the 2-3 minutes is done, add sesame oi and it is ready to be served and enjoyed!