Champorado (chocolate rice porridge) is a childhood memory for many Filipinos, me and Kat included. I remember that when my grandmother would make some for me and my siblings, she used sticky/malagkit rice, tablea (a ball of ground-up cacao beans), and evaporated milk or powdered milk. While I have been hankering for some champorado for quite some time now, I couldn’t justify buying sticky rice for just us two here at home for only one dish. Of course, life has a way of throwing a curveball by leading the both of us to read about Balatinaw rice and champorado.
Balatinaw is one of the many heirloom rice varieties that come from Ifugao. This is a black glutinous rice that smells and tastes like chocolate when it’s cooked. It is a rare treat to get our hands on this kind of rice here in Metro Manila because of limited supplies.
A sobering fact about our country’s gastronomic reality is that heirloom rice varieties like Balatinaw are in danger of disappearing entirely due to several factors:
- Ifugao rice is hand-cultivated from start to finish
- There is little to no awareness from locals on the existence of these varieties of rice
- The influx of imported and mass-produced white rice makes it cost-prohibitive to compete with heirloom rice.
Despite these problems, there are some places where one can get heirloom rice varieties from places like the Rice Terraces Farmers Cooperative, and Terraces Bounty.
In our case, we got ours from Rural Rising PH when they made a snap buy post that they were selling 5kg of Balatinaw rice. A little over a week later, Typhoon Fabian (International Name: In-fa) created an opportunity to try cooking some champorado and I used Lutong Fili_pinay’s champorado recipe as a guide.
The ingredients in her champorado recipe are:
- 1 cup of sticky/malagkit rice
- 1 liter of water
- ¾ cup of brown sugar
- ¾ cup of cocoa powder
- A pinch of salt
- A can of evaporated milk
Team Glasses Tweaks:
- Balatinaw rice instead of sticky rice
- Grated 6 thumb-sized bars of unsweetened Ricoa chocolate
- Condensed milk, instead of evaporated milk
- 1 tablespoon of brown sugar
- Instead of adding salt, I placed dried fish on top of the champorado.
- Danggit (sun-dried and salted rabbitfish)
- Boneless Dilis (sun-dried anchovy)
How to make Balatinaw champorado:
- Rinse the Balatinaw rice to remove any dirt or sediment
- Once clean, place the rice in a pot and pour in the water. The rice should be fully submerged.
- Cook the rice over high heat and simmer until the water reaches a rolling boil
- Lower the heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, stir occasionally until it achieves a thick consistency.
- In a separate bowl, combine the grated chocolate and brown sugar.
- Pour in the chocolate-sugar mixture into the thickened rice until the mixture is fully incorporated.
- Take the champorado off the heat and serve in a bowl. Add some condensed milk to taste and top with fried dried fish.
- For danggit, fry over medium to medium-high heat for 2 minutes on each side until lightly brown. Place on a paper towel or strainer to remove the excess oil.
- For dilis, fry over medium heat for around 15 to 20 seconds then place on a paper towel or strainer to remove the excess oil.
It was a spoonful of happiness in every bite during the cold and stormy weather at home. We hope that more people will cook with heirloom rice varieties like Balatinaw or use other local ingredients like kamias or budbud to bring them back into our daily lives and meals.
Please let us know what you think of this recipe in the comments below.
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