Seafood Pao Fan | Submerged Rice in a Rich Seafood Broth

How to make the ultimate comfort dish of rice in a rich prawn and chicken soup, Singapore Seafood Pao Fan.

Seafood Pao Fan is a comforting Singapore Chinese dish of rice in a delicious broth. In Chinese, ‘pao fan’ means ‘submerged rice’, and that’s exactly what the dish is!

Traditionally this is a home-cooked dish using whatever you need to use up in the fridge. These days, you can find pimped out versions of this being sold at hawker food stalls. This also became a very trendy dish in Singapore. There’s not too many halal-certified Seafood Pao Fan stalls in Singapore, which is why I first wanted to concoct this at home.

A typical bowl of Pao Fan includes an orange-hued prawn broth, your seafood of choice, puffy egg floss and rice crispies that complement the soup-soaked rice so well.

This is one of those cold-weather dishes, perfect for this time of the year! If you’ve not tried this ultra comforting, hearty Seafood Pao Fan, give this easy recipe a go!

How to make the Best Broth for Seafood Pao Fan

This is an easy, but delicious broth that uses both prawn essence, and chicken flavours!

I used prawn heads here, but you can use the shells as well. Frying off the prawn heads and shells are crucial for non-fishy tasting broth, check out my ‘How to make Prawn Stock’ post if you need more information on this.

Most soup used in seafood pao fan is a mix of prawns and meat – usually pork bones. This recipe uses scrap chicken parts instead. Use any parts of the chicken that you wouldn’t use in your dishes, like chicken feet, bony parts with not much meat or the butt portion. Of course, if you want to use the fleshier parts of your chicken, you can as well. It’s just that they’re not meant to be consumed after making the stock since it will have no flavour left, so I wouldn’t waste those chicken parts for broth. See also: ‘How to make Chicken Stock from Scraps’.

This is also the same broth recipe used to make my signature Singapore Hokkien Mee! If you have extra broth, make sure you keep the broth to try that next.

I simply used salt and sugar to season it, but I also like to use fish sauce as salt. The fish sauce adds a yummy umami to the seafood broth.

Best Rice to Use for Seafood Pao Fan

Since pao fan is a ‘leftover’ dish, the rice that’s usually used is overnight rice. Overnight rice is drier than freshly cooked rice, so it holds well against the soup. That said, no reason at all why you can’t use fresh rice!

My organisation is not that good, so when the craving for Seafood Pao Fan hits, and I don’t have leftover rice, I would just use a fresh batch. You get slightly mushy rice but it’s still good.

What Toppings to Use for Pao Fan

My favourite seafood toppings for Pao Fan are boiled prawns and sliced fish, but you can add whatever you want. Clams or La La are also good additions to give you a sweeter broth. Some hawker stalls have pimped out versions with whole lobsters even.

I used Spanish Mackerel or Batang fish here, but any fish accessible to you will work. I’ve even made this with salmon. I fried the fish here, but if you want to go the healthier route, you can simply boil the fish with the prawns.

Besides the seafood, Pao Fan has two important elements: the puffy egg floss and the rice crispies.

The egg floss is low key my favourite part of pao fan! It’s spongy, crispy texture gets so addictive. It’s also incredibly fun and satisfying to make. One of the best things about making this at home is that I can add as much as I want!

Puffed rice are also commonly used, but they’re a lot more complicated to make at home. I prefer to use rice crispies instead – which are simply fried-till-crispy cooked rice. Overnight rice is best for making the crispy rice. You can use freshly cooked rice toom but it has more moisture in it, so it takes longer to crisp up. It will also tend to create lots of oil splatter so take caution.

Make sure to watch the YouTube video on how to easily make these two components!

How to Serve Seafood Pao Fan

There are two ways to serve this:

1. Either adding the rice to the broth, and let it cook and absorb some of the soup while it warms up, or
2. Ladling the broth over the rice.

Option 1 is what hawker stalls tend to do, where each serving is done in a sauce pan and poured into a bowl and passed along to you. At home, I much prefer option 2, since it is a lot more fuss free to do when you’re serving a family. I also like that everyone can have their pick of seafood toppings, crispy egg and rice crispies before ladling over the soup!

Soy Sauce Chilli Dip

I love serving this with a side of soy sauce chilli dip. Making this is easy! Chop up some bird’s eye chillies, and add it to light soy sauce. If you make this beforehand and let the flavours develop, you will have an even more spicy soy sauce dip.

More recipes like this:

If you love this Seafood Pao Fan, you might love these hawker dishes too:

• Chicken Bak Kut Teh
• Singapore Hot Plate Egg Tofu Beancurd
• Singapore Hokkien Mee
• The Easiest Chicken and Shrimps Wantons

Seafood Pao Fan | Rice in a Rich Broth

Recipe by Sha

0.0 from 0 votes

Course: Recipes

Servings

3-4

servings

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

1

hour 

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Cooked Rice, overnight is best, to serve

• 8-10 Prawns or Shrimp

• 100g of Bok Choy or Vegetables of Choice

• Easy Seafood Broth

• 300g Prawn Heads and Shells

• 200g Chicken Feet/Spare Parts

• 30g or 2 tbsps Ikan Bilis or Dried Anchovies

• 1 Onion

• 5-6 cloves Garlic, lightly mashed

• 1 inch Ginger

• 1.5 litres Water

• 1 tsp Salt, to taste

• 1/2 tsp Sugar, to taste

• Crispy Rice

• 100g Cooked Rice, overnight is best

• Oil, to fry

• Crispy Puffy Egg Floss

• 2 Eggs

• Oil, to fry

• Fried Fish

• 230g Fish Fillets (I’m using Spanish Mackerel or Batang fish)

• 1 tsp Salt

• 1/4 tsp Ground White Pepper

• 1 tbsp Cornstarch, to coat

• Oil, to fry

• Soy Sauce Chilli Dip

• 2-3 tbsps Light Soy Sauce

• 1 Bird’s Eye Chilli, chopped

Directions

• Easy Broth
• Parboil the chicken parts in boiling water for about 5 minutes, or until scum appears in the water and the blood has cooked off. Then remove the chicken from the water.
• In a soup pot, add some oil. Once hot, add the prawn heads and shells, and stir to fry in the oil. Let the prawn heads and shells turn orange and the liquid to completely cook off. It should also smell like grilled prawns.
• Add back the parboiled chicken, rinsed ikan bilis or dried anchovies, onion, garlic, ginger, and water. Stir while lightly scraping the bottom of the pot to combine the caramelised prawn bits with the water.
• Allow mixture to come to a boil, before turning down the heat so the broth simmers. Let simmer for about 1 hour.
• At the 1-hour or so mark, remove all of the solid ingredients with a slotted spoon so you are left with just the broth. For an even clearer broth, run it through a strainer or cheese cloth.
• Season the broth with salt and sugar, and it’s done!
• Crispy Rice
• While the seafood broth is cooking, prepare the rest of the pao fan components. Fill a wok with plenty of oil, and once hot – dip a wooden chopstick in, if bubbles form, the oil is ready – add cooked rice to the oil.
• Over medium heat, allow the rice to turn golden brown. The rice will clump when added fresh, but it will break up as it crisps up. You can also use your chopsticks to break it apart.
• Once rice turns crispy and golden brown, remove from oil and drain on paper towels. Turn off the heat.
• Puffy Egg Floss
• In same oil and pan as the crispy rice, turn the heat back on and allow it to heat up.
• Once oil is hot, with your spatula or chopsticks, slowly swirl the oil in one direction. While swirling the oil, gradually pour in the beaten eggs.
• Let the eggs cook and once it turns golden brown, remove from the oil and drain on paper towels. Turn off the heat.
• Fried Fish
• Add salt and pepper to fish slices and massage it onto the fish to marinate.
• Lightly coat the fish with cornstarch all over.
• You can use the same pan and oil as the eggs and rice crispies, turn the heat back on. Allow the oil to heat up.
• Add the fish to the oil and let it cook. Do not crowd the pan and cook in batches.
• Once the fish is crispy and has some colour to it, remove it from the oil and drain on paper towels.
• Assembly
• In the seafood broth, boil prawns or any other seafood you want to use for your Pao Fan.
• Then also blanch the bok choy, or your leafy vegetables of choice in the broth too.
• Add rice to a bowl and arrange the cooked seafood on the bowl. Pour the seafood broth to the rice to cover it. Then top with eggs, vegetables and the crispy rice. Serve!

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