Sizzling Rice Soup

Sizzling Rice Soup features a light broth with vegetables and chicken or shrimp, topped with toasty, crispy rice. The sizzling and crackling sounds of the piping hot rice, as it’s poured into the soup, are sure to impress your guests. Now you can make this Chinese restaurant favorite at home!

Sizzling Rice Soup is a light and flavorful broth filled with fresh vegetables and tender pieces of chicken or shrimp, topped with crispy rice.

The magic of this dish is in the presentation: as the crispy rice is poured into the hot soup right at the dinner table, it sizzles and crackles, adding both flavor and wonderful texture.

I had never heard of Sizzling Rice Soup until I moved from Malaysia to the United States, where I quickly discovered its popularity in American Chinese restaurants. This unique dish, originally from Taiwan, is often served family style, with the crispy rice bringing a little thrill to the table as it sizzles in the hot broth.

Now that I’m back in Malaysia, I’ve had to learn to make it myself, as it’s still not widely available, even in Chinese restaurants here. Recreating it at home brings back fond memories of my time in the U.S.

I hope that you will enjoy this Sizzling Rice Soup recipe!

Ingredients for Sizzling Rice Soup

• Cooked Rice: The crispy rice is a key element that contributes both flavor and texture to this dish. In the instructions below, I will outline a couple of methods for preparing the crispy rice for this soup (Square Crispy Rice Cakes, or Loose Crispy Rice). Or to save time, you can use Instant Sizzling Rice Crackers and skip some of the prep work
• Chicken Stock: A light, flavorful chicken stock serves as a base for the soup. For the best flavor, homemade chicken stock is ideal, but a good store-bought stock works well
• Soy Sauce: This Asian cooking staple adds an umami flavor and a touch of saltiness to the broth
• Sesame oil: This adds just a touch of a nutty flavor to the soup
• Shaoxing wine (optional): The Shaoxing wine enhances the soup, adding a layer of depth 
• Ground white pepper: Just a small dash of white pepper adds a subtle heat and rounds out the flavors of the soup
• Vegetables: You can use a variety of vegetables in your soup. Some great options are bok choy, carrots, snow peas, sugar snap peas and baby corn
• Shimp: Plump, juicy shrimp add a touch of sweetness and pair so well with the light broth. You can use either fresh or frozen shrimp. Alternatively, you can also use chicken. 
• Cooking oil is used to fry the crispy rice with that golden brown exterior

How to Make Sizzling Rice Soup

There are three steps to making Sizzling Rice Soup:

1. 1) Preparing the rice. The cooked rice will need to be baked in order to dry it out.
2. 2) Prepare the soup
3. 3) Deep-fry the prepared rice to make crispy rice puffs

1) Preparing the Rice

There are a couple of ways in which the sizzling rice can be prepared and served. The crispy rice is either packed and then cut into square cakes (like thin rice crispy treats) or served loose (as pictured above).

The first step is to cook the rice, then dry the cooked rice by baking it in the oven. (Side note: If you do not have an electric rice cooker, click here for a step-by-step guide on How to Cook Rice Without a Rice Cooker)

Square Crispy Rice Cakes (Option 1 for the Sizzling Rice)

To make square crispy rice cakes, pour 1 cup of cooked rice onto a baking sheet, then use a spatula to spread and pack the rice evenly to not more than ½ an inch thick.

Bake at 300 degrees F for about 1 hour until dry. Allow the rice to cool completely before cutting them into 2-inch squares. Just before you are ready to serve the soup, deep fry the squares until puffy and slightly golden brown.

Shortcut: You can also find Instant Sizzling Rice Crackers at Asian supermarkets or online. These pre-made rice crackers are convenient as you can skip the baking. All you need to do is to deep-fry them just before serving.

Loose Crispy Rice (Option 2 for the Sizzling Rice - PREFERRED)

Personally, I prefer my crispy rice to be loose in my Sizzling Rice Soup (as opposed to the square rice cakes) for a few reasons – it takes a lot faster to bake/dry the rice in the oven (20 minutes as opposed to 1 hour), and I prefer a little bit of crunchy rice in each bite, rather than having to break apart the large piece of rice cake once it’s in the soup.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, then spread 1 cup of cooked rice on the sheet in a very thin layer. Using a fork helps ensure the rice stays fluffy and separated so it bakes evenly.

Leftover rice is perfect for this as it’s not too clumpy and will separate well.

Bake for 20 minutes.

The rice probably will not brown much, but you will notice that the rice grains will be very hard and almost translucent. Not each grain of rice will be completely dry but this is sufficient for deep-frying.

Allow the rice to cool, then pick up the parchment paper to pour the baked rice into a bowl.

Set the baked rice aside to prepare the soup.

Tip: This baked rice can be prepared ahead of time and stored in the fridge. If you will be storing the rice for more than a few days, increase the baking time for a few more minutes or leave it out on your kitchen countertop for a few hours to ensure that each grain is completely dry before storing.

2) Preparing the Soup

Since the Sizzling Rice Soup will be served family-style (so you can pour the crispy rice into the soup for that sizzling effect) as opposed to individual bowls, I recommend using a large pot that you can cook and serve the soup in, just so you won't have to worry about transferring the hot soup into a large serving bowl once it is ready.

Some great options include clay pots, ceramic stockpots, and dutch ovens.

Bring 4 cups of chicken stock to a boil over medium-high heat, then add one carrot (sliced). Click here to read the step-by-step guide on how to cut the carrot into flower-shaped slices.

Of course, you can slice the carrot however you like, but this makes the dish look so pretty 🙂

Add one teaspoon of soy sauce, one teaspoon of sesame oil, one teaspoon of Shaoxing wine (optional), a dash of ground white pepper, and ½ a teaspoon of salt to the soup.

Add 2 stalks of baby bok choy, chopped into bite-sized pieces. You can add just about any vegetable to this soup but I would recommend limiting it to 3 kinds to keep the soup simple. Baby corn, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots are some great options.

Bring the soup to a boil again over medium high heat, then add 8 – 10 medium shrimp. Let the soup boil for a few seconds, turn off the heat, then cover the pot. The shrimp will continue to cook so turning off the heat at this time will ensure they don’t overcook.

Tip: This soup can easily be made vegetarian by swapping the chicken broth for vegetable broth and omitting the shrimp.

Leave the soup pot covered until you are ready to serve.

3) Making the Crispy Rice

The secret to making the rice sizzle is to pour the crispy rice into the soup while the crisp rice is still piping hot.

Just before you are ready to serve, heat approximately 1 cup of cooking oil (or just enough to deep fry the rice) in a wok over medium-high heat.

Before you pour the rice in, test the oil to make sure that it is ready for deep-frying by placing a wooden chopstick in the wok. If it starts to bubble immediately, it is ready.

Pour a small batch of rice into the wok. After just a few seconds, the rice grains will puff up and turn brown.

Use a stainless steel soup skimmer or a spider strainer to scoop up the rice from the oil.

Scoop up any stray grains of rice with your wok spatula and place it on the skimmer. It’s important not to leave any grains of rice in the hot oil as they will burn quickly and affect the taste of subsequent batches.

Place the crispy rice on a serving plate, then fry up the next batch as quickly as possible. You’ll be doing 2 – 3 batches in total to deep-fry all of the rice.

Work as fast (but safely!) as possible to ensure that the rice stays hot enough to sizzle when it is poured into the soup.

Pour all of the crispy rice into the soup and watch it sizzle and crackle! Enjoy!

Other Soup Recipes You Might Enjoy

• Wonton Soup
• Tom Yum Soup
• Chinese Hot and Sour Soup
• Chinese Egg Drop Soup
• Thai Coconut Chicken Soup
• Indonesian Chicken Soup (Soto Ayam)