Zi Hai Guo Self-Heating Claypot Rice Review

After my first experience with Self heating hot pot, I was concerned about trying out more self-heating items but during one of my shopping trips in Chinatown, I was attracted to these colourful and cute panda packages from Zi Hai Guo ( Loosely translated as self-happiness pot) and couldn’t help but purchased 2 to testing

This self-heating clay pot rice is available on most online platforms and has over 10 different flavours to satisfy the pickiest palates. Some of the popular flavours include; Cantonese-style sausage rice, Taiwanese braised pork rice, mushroom with beef rice and mushroom with chicken rice

The 2 flavours I purchased were the preserved vegetable pork rice and pickled vegetable with braised pork rice. Each bowl contains 1 packet of pure water, dehydrated vegetables, a heating element, instant rice, a sauce pack as well as instructions on how to cook the rice on the back of the label. To facilitate eating, a small fork was provided as well

Firstly, you place the instant rice in the top plastic bowl with the pure water and preserved vegetable

Next, place the self heating pack at the bottom of the lower pot and fill it up with water, before the heating pack start bubbling, place the top bowl with the rice onto the bottom pot and cover it with the given plastic cover. Now you just have to wait for 10 mins or more depending on the instructions

The one on the left is the preserved vegetable with braised pork while the one on the right is the preserved vegetable with pork. At this point, the heating pack is still smoking and can be hot, so do be careful while eating or stirring the rice

The last step is to pour in the sauce into the rice and give the entire bowl a good mix so that the vegetable and meat and sauce is mixed throughout the rice. First thoughts, the rice is quite dry and on the harder texture. The preserved vegetable and braised pork has charred bits of the meat and overall taste is more on the salty side. The preserved vegetable and pork version is lighter on the palate and you cannot really taste the meat at all

Personally, the taste is just mediocre and doesn’t make me crave for it a 2nd time. But it is something I will probably bring for camping or roadtrips when I crave for rice or something hot for supper due to the convenience of preparing it all in only 15 mins. In comparison to the self heating hot pot, this is definitely a more filling option due to the rice but for big eaters, this is more like a snacking portion

I still faced the same issue of the heating pack smoking up for 1-2 hours after I finished eating. I simply soaked it in the sink and disposed it within the box it came in thereafter