Today we’re taking a classic Filipino breakfast recipe and giving it a colorful twist with purple yams. So here is our delicious Ube Champorado, creamy congee with Ube Halaya. We are sure you will love it!
Traditional champorado consists of glutinous rice boiled in water and flavored with chocolate or cocoa powder. Served hot or cold, this thick and chocolatey porridge is topped with milk and salted dried fish.
In our recipe, we swapped chocolate for ube halaya (purple yam). A staple ingredient in Filipino cuisine, ube halaya is made from sweetened mashed purple yams (called ube in Filipino).
Ube Spread gives this rice porridge a gorgeous purple color and a subtly sweet and earthy flavor!
You can find ube halaya at your local Asian grocery store or online. But if you can snag some Ube, you can easily make Ube spread from scratch. It’s cheap, healthy and convenient!
We have a homemade ube butter recipe that’s perfect for making ube spread.
Our Ube Halaya is low in sugar, without food coloring and with the addition of some coconut oil, it is suitable both as a spread and as an alternative to butter for casseroles.
To make our ube champorado recipe dairy-free and vegan, we substituted coconut milk for condensed milk, which pairs beautifully with the flavor of ube.
We have also found an ingenious plant-based alternative to dried fish: dried mango slices.
They’re deliciously chewy and look like strips of salted fish, perfect as a topping for ube champorado. They are optional, so feel free to omit them if you prefer.
And finally the rice. Sticky rice is a must for preparing champorado.
Despite the name, sticky rice does not contain gluten. It is called sticky because its high starch content makes it sticky and gooey when cooked.
Sticky rice is also called sweet rice or sticky rice and you can find it at your local Asian grocery store or online.
Short-grain sushi rice, risotto, or long-grain Thai jasmine rice are good alternatives to sticky rice if you can’t find it.
When preparing the ube champorado, we recommend that you follow the instructions on the packaging for the rice cooking times, as each brand or type of rice can behave differently.
Check the rice every few minutes while it cooks; Make sure it’s cooked through, but avoid overcooking or the congee will become mushy and mushy.
We hope you will enjoy this Ube Champorado recipe as much as we do! And if you’re looking for more Ube Halaya recipes, we think you’ll love this Vegan Ube Flan and Soft Ube Loaf. Try it!