Riceburners

[muckefuck]

There are a number of words I find so charming or useful or both that I'm trying to collect them in as many languages as possible. One of them is "the crispy/burnt portion of rice on the bottom of a cooking pot". I first came across a term for this in the title of the Japanese movie お焦げ Okoge, which was left untranslated in English. (In Japanese slang, the word for "rice pot" is slang for "homosexual"; therefore, the word okoge or "rice sticking to the bottom of the rice pot"--from kogeru "burn, scorch"--is used for "fag hag".) I immediately figured that, if the Japanese had a word for it, the Koreans must, too, and eventually managed to track down 누룽지 /nwulwungci/ (related to 누렁 /nwuleng/ "deep yellow colour"). Later, after reading more about Chinese cuisine, I learned that what is often called "sizzling rice" on menus, 鍋巴 guōba, is none other than the Chinese equivalent (lit. "cooking pot crust") and just now I used a Chinese-Vietnamese dictionary to track down: cơm cháy ("burnt rice").

Of course, it only makes sense that cultures to whom rice is so vital that their languages possess three or more distinct roots relating to it (e.g. Viet. lúa "rice plant; unhusked rice", gạo "uncooked husked rice", cơm "cooked rice", etc.) would have lexicalised terms for "burnt rice on the bottom of a cooking pot". What's surprising and oddly gratifying is to find a word for it on the other side world where it's scarcely been cultivated for three centuries. And today, that's exactly what I did find: corroncha (Costa Rican Spanish). No idea what the ultimate origin of this root is; it seems to be unknown outside of Central America and Colombia where it means "rough scaly surface; hide [of an alligator]; shell [of a tortoise]".

ETA:

• Persian: ته دیگ lit. "bottom of the pot"
• Thai: ข้าวตัง /khâaw tang/ "burnt rice stuck to the pot" (lit. "rice mat")
• Indonesian: kerak (also has the generalised meaning "crust")
• Ecuadorean Spanish: cocolón (according to Uncle Betty from Loja)
• Cuban Spanish: raspita
• Barranquilla Spanish: cucayo
• Colombian Spanish: pega, pegao

Comments

[wiped.livejournal.com]

in persian it's called ته دیگ tah dig, literally "bottom pot." the skill of an aspiring persian cook is often judged by their ability to make rice with a good tah dig. rather than simply being the burnt rice at the bottom of the pot, tah dig is a side dish that has to be carefully prepared with saffron, yogurt, and sometimes potatoes, timed just right, and removed without unnecessary breakage.

and just like vietnamese, et al., persian has several distinct roots for rice: برنج berenj "rice plant/rice in general," پلو polo "cooked rice," also used as a general term for rice, چلو chelo [i'm not really sure how this differs from polo, to be honest], کته kateh "sticky rice," دمی dami "simmered rice," and so on. however, i think kateh refers to a kind of food container and dami just means "simmered," so maybe they aren't really words for rice per se.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what the associations of corroncha are in Spanish, but I'm willing to bet they also describe a tasty treat rather than the product of a cook's neglect. That seems to be a common thread among all the cultures which have a consecrated expression for this and that's why I object to "burnt rice" as an English translation; IME, this can only mean that something has gone wrong with the cooking, whereas I imagine that if an East Asian had to indicate that the dish was ruined by overcooking, they'd use a different expression from the ones listed above (e.g. something like 탄 밥 /than pap/ in Korean, etc.).