Tue, May 20, 2025 page3

• Champion risotto reaches stores

  • By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter
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  An award-winning instant risotto dish is now available at more than 7,000 7-Eleven convenience stores nationwide, the Agriculture and Food Agency said on Thursday.

  The product was selected through last year’s Taiwan’s First Flavor Feud competition, which aimed to identify the best instant and frozen Taiwanese risottos created by local catering businesses.

  The contest offered a NT$100,000 prize for the winners of both the “instant” and “frozen” categories, along with an additional NT$100,000 bonus to support mass production.

  

  Agriculture and Food Agency Director-General Hu Jong-i, third left, gestures at a news conference in Taipei on Tuesday last week.

  Photo courtesy of the Agriculture and Food Agency

  A total of 183 entries were submitted from across the country, with 24 advancing to the final round held in November last year.

  The finalists were judged by a panel of catering industry professionals, food bloggers, chefs and 30 members of the public, including convenience store managers, university students and working professionals, the agency said.

  The winner of the “instant” category was the Hakka-Style Stir-Fried Taiwanese Risotto, created by the Liming branch of Yu Zhuan Zhen Pin (御饌臻品), a Taichung-based restaurant that specializes in Beijing and Shanghai cuisine, it said.

  The dish uses traceable “Tainan No. 11” white rice as its base, and is first browned with spear shrimp, garlic and chili, and then mixed with grilled squid, slices of pork belly meat, fried dried tofu and parsley to create a rich and fresh aromatic profile, it said.

  The “frozen” category champion was the Beef Taiwanese Risotto with Tomatoes, developed by Treeart Hotel (璞樹文旅), also in Taichung, it added.

  The product combines traceable “Taiken 9” white rice with buckwheat and brown rice in a carefully formulated golden ratio, and is preserved using a specialized freezing technique developed by Si Sheng Foods Industry Co, it said.

  When heated, the rice and buckwheat take on a springy, fibrous texture, infused with the layered sweet and fresh flavors of stewed short plate meat, locally grown tomatoes and fresh vegetables, it added.

  Yu Zhuan Zhen Pin’s Hakka-Style Stir-Fried Taiwanese Risotto is now available at more than 7,000 7-Eleven stores nationwide.

  Treeart Hotel’s Beef Taiwanese Risotto with Tomatoes, along with its Pork Taiwanese Risotto with Shacha Sauce and Chicken Taiwanese Risotto with Italian Herbs and Cheese, are available at 65 Carrefour hypermarkets and would be available at 18 Far Eastern A-Mart hypermarkets by the end of the month, the agency said.

  To promote rice-based cuisine and support the local catering industry, the agency has held annual rice product competitions since 2019, it said, adding that previous themes have included rice cakes, fried rice and rice balls.

  However, as rice cakes are typically made with Zailai rice, while Japonica rice makes up the majority of domestic production, the theme was changed to fried rice in 2020 and retained for the next two years, the agency said.

  In 2023, the contest adopted rice balls as the theme to add variety, and last year it shifted focus to Taiwanese risotto, it said, adding that another risotto-themed contest is scheduled for this year.

  “The goal is to help develop a strong rice-based food culture in Taiwan and to make quality rice products more accessible to consumers through mass production,” the agency said.
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