I recently spent an unglamorous staycation sulking in my Brooklyn apartment, battling a viral infection. It’s winter. Colds happen. But damn, being sick sucks. There are few things that bring me comfort during a bout of illness: blankets are either too warm or not warm enough, tea dries out my throat, and I have trouble sleeping. Luckily, I can always count on the healing presence of my cats and my mother’s Thai joke.

Since I don’t want to lend you my cats, I’ll tell you how I batch-prepare a week’s supply of my mother’s soothing rice porridge to eat until I feel better. It’s a nourishing, warm, huggable soup, perfect for when you’re feeling at your worst.

Thai jok (pronounced a bit like "yoo-g") is a comforting rice porridge similar to dishes from other Asian countries (such as Chinese congee or lugaw from the Philippines). In Thailand, you can find it in restaurants that specialize in this particular dish. Jok is mainly eaten for breakfast, but I also like to eat it for lunch, especially when I'm sick and my sleep schedule suffers.

The soup base is made from broken jasmine rice and chicken stock. You can buy bags of broken rice from some Asian supermarkets for this purpose, but I break regular rice myself. Breaking it is the key. You have probably added rice with intact grains to soup before; this rice swells up and stays at the bottom of the bowl. The rice in jok behaves differently.