Thursday, February 21, 2008

Kitchen Confessional

For the life of me I can't cook rice. I'm pretty practiced at cooking pasta to perfect al dente. Cous, cous, of course no problem. Rice noodles, check. If the mood strikes, I can even cook a rather fair risotto, but I can't cook the everyday white or brown rice. Each time I try it turns our too wet, too sticky, too burned one memorable time when I tried toasting organic brown, or too hard.

Tonight I made this super yummy meal, but the rice to sop up the spicy, sweet delicious sauce, not up to par. Any tips? Other than get a rice steamer? The last thing I need is another one-task kitchen appliance.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I like the minute rice (brown rice). Every time I've made "real" rice, it burns in the bottom of my pan. My mom swears by her rice cooker, but I don't have any room for another appliance! And we really don't eat enough rice to justify it.

Mimi said...

Rice is tricky indeed! I think I have finally figured it out, as I too have had trouble! If you get the Lundberg kind (Krogers and Whole Foods has them), follow the directions to a "t". Every rice seems to use different amounts of water. Use a liquid measuring cup for the water and a dry measuing cup for the rice. Also, some folks like to rinse the startchiness out of their rice. Short brown seems to have more startch versus long grain brown. To rinse, place dry rice on a bowl with cold water. Swish, drain and repeat until water is clear. I know for sticky, glutinous rice, this is a must, but for most of my regular brown rices, it's optional for me.

On the rice cooker subject, if you chose to buy one, don't waste your money on a cheap one, especially if you use mostly brown rice. We bought a 40$ and it's a total waste of money. It's fine for white rice, I've been told. But frankly, I find it just burns my rice and really makes a mess of it. I plan on splurging for a Tiger or Zojirushi 160$+ kind that uses fuzzy logic technology in the near future, as we eat rice just about everyday.

I'll have to send you a picture of my Laotion rice basket steamer! It's quite the gadget of the most simple kind!

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh...I would never dare to make "real" rice. I get the 10-minute Boil-A-Bag kind and it comes out perfectly every time. Uncle Ben's now has it in a brown rice variety.