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Between forums poster wroughtirony, a couple of my coworkers, and entirely too many friends/family, I've been told at least once that I should make some kind of guide about the world of rice. Why? Rice is my freaking passion. At any given day, I have at least 10+ varieties in my pantry. I eat rice for pretty much every meal, and enjoy all different types, depending on the application. For the bulk day to day rice, I used to go through roughly a 10-lb bag when I lived alone. Because my current romantic partner isn't a huge rice eater, I still go through about 10 lbs of the stuff per month, because I'll make pasta or other such things on some nights. I also work for a rice import company (plz don't dox me). We import rice from Thailand and India, and our primary imports are organic/conventional white/brown basmati (traditional, 1121, and pusa, as well as parboiled or steamed) that are aged a minimum of 1 year, organic/conventional white/brown Thai hom Mali jasmine, white Thai jasmine rice, and frozen cooked jasmine rice. Although my job is primarily in the logistics department, I started off when the company was me and my boss, so I've done every job there is (except sales) in the rice import business. This includes bookkeeping, quality assurance, import logistics, making marketing materials, and so so so much customer service. We don't sell to your individual stores, bur rather to the folk who pack rice into smaller packaging from bulk totes (1 metric ton, or 2204.6 lbs each--ask me how I know that conversion off the top of my head) that we import. There are a couple of private label customers, whose details I can't discuss, but suffice it to say that if you're in the USA, you've probably seen our rice on your store's shelves. Because of the varieties of rice we import, our internal SKU's can get pretty confusing unless you know what's going on, which is why I've had to explain the basics of rice so many times to so many of my colleagues. Most of my coworkers are from traditionally rice eating countries across various parts of Asia, so it's not like they don't know from rice. However, the thing about being from a rice eating region is that you tend to have tunnel vision about the rice you're eating, and more or less ignore the other types. This means that in general, even someone from (for example) India or China will know the rice that they eat in their family, and maybe one or two varieties of other rice, but don't really get into why a particular customer of ours will ask for a specific type of rice. So why DOES a customer ask for a particular type of rice? Because their customers have different needs from their rice. For example, a lot of customers from the Middle East will want aged Basmati that's been parboiled. Why? Because the spices used in Middle Eastern cooking goes well with the heady fragrance of Basmati rice, but the amount of stirring/moving/agitating that the recipes call for require a rice to be very sturdy. Raw rice would turn into mush if you're stirring it around a lot, whereas parboiled grains are much stronger and can stand up to the abuse. Also, the Middle East is India's largest export market, with Saudi Arabi, Iran, and Iraq being the largest importers. They know rice, and they know it well. Our Middle Eastern customers are very particular about the sorts of rice that they get from us, and all of it needs to be aged, or they're not here for it. AND, they can tell the difference between the stuff that's been aged a good long time, and the stuff that's newer crop. That said, when I hear "well, what rice should I buy," it's not really a question I can honestly answer unless I know a little more information. What are you cooking? How sticky do you want the grains to be? How soft do you want the grains to be? Do you care if the rice is a fragrant variety, or will you be happy with a non fragrant rice? [All rice has an aroma of rice, but Basmati and Jasmine rices have a characteristic floral/nutty aroma that characterises them as "fragrant" rice.] What's your budget? What kind of spices are you using? Are you feeding people who are used to eating the sort of rice you're looking to feed them, or is it someone who's not fussed one way or the other? There's a whole host of considerations when choosing a rice for home eating, and all of them have a good fair bit of wiggle room. Mind that I primarily deal in Jasmine and Basmati varieties of rice. I do dabble in Ponni and Sons Masoori for daily driver eating rice at home. I've been known to dip my toe into glutinous rice and the occasional foray into sushi rice. I haven't done much exploring of Italian Arborio or Canaroli or the Spanish Bomba rices. I have tried Egyptian rice before, but it's not a variety I'm terribly familiar with. That said, if it's a relatively well known variety of rice, I've either eaten it, dabbled with it, or have it in my pantry. So. Please ask me about rice, because I love discussing it.
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Dec 9, 2023 19:16
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Shooting Blanks posted:Is Carolina Gold a marketing ploy, or is it indeed a recovered type? What would you compare it to? So if you see the Carolina branded rice in the store, that's just regular long grain white rice. Carolina Gold rice behaves differently, as it's milled differently from regular long grain rice. White rice in general is what's called "extra well milled", which means that any trace of bran is removed to the point where the final product is bright white. Carolina Gold, in addition to being a specific variety, is also milled well, but still has a tiny bit of the bran left on. It's going to behave differently than regular long grain white, insofar as if you cook it after toasting the grains lightly in fat, and then adding just enough water (water absorption method), you're going to end up with fluffy light grains of rice. If you cook it black eyed peas, on the other hand, in a stew type dish, it's going to be creamy and retain a bit of chewiness. It will stand up to those big strong flavours and textures that you'd get from beans and greens, which is why it's the go-to for New Year's Eve Hoppin' John with collard greens on the side.
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Dec 9, 2023 20:14
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IMO, long grain glutinous rice isn't going to work so hot for rice balls or sushi. You want short grain glutinous rice for that. But! Nothing says you can't try and report back. The texture of long grain sticky rice is going to be chewy and the grains are super sticky, to the point where you can pick it up with your fingers, and make like a little spoon out of it to scoop up creamy curries and the like. Anyway. Neither here nor there. For sticky rice, you want to soak it at least overnight in plenty of cold water after rinsing well. Why? There is a LOT of starch in the rice that can get overcooked while leaving the inside of the grain uncooked, and your entire thing will be gross. The slow soaking in cold water allows the rice grains to rehydrate, and come up to temperature evenly and cook evenly. By the way, it's not strictly required for you to rinse your rice. Nobody is going to come to your house and arrest you for failing to do so. However, the process of manufacturing rice is not sterile. The rice mill will do their very best to ensure cleanliness when processing the rice, but they are frequently not the only ones handling the rice. The mill will sell to distributors/traders who will take the rice and sell it to packaging companies. Things happen in transit, and rarely do you get rice that's been packed under super clean conditions and vacuum sealed to prevent any outside invaders from coming in. Nothing on the surface of the rice is going to harm you, because you're doing the kill step (i.e., boiling for a long time) at home. However, it is freaking gross what ends up in there, so just wash your rice, eh? This lady from YouTube explains the full process of making sticky rice properly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcTo0ZM8Iqg If you have SHORT GRAIN glutinous rice, on the other hand (as in, there's a good chance that it has Korean writing on it), that's a whole different process. Still needs to be rinses thoroughly, and soaked overnight, but basically if you do like a 1:1 ratio of soaked rice to water, it should work just fine.
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Dec 9, 2023 21:43
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Holy cats, this blew up in my absence. Let me try to answer the easy ones and then give separate posts to the more involved ones. TychoCelchuuu posted:One of the places I buy my rice is a bulk goods shop that just has big bags of basmati sitting out. The guy scoops however much you want from the bag. I think they have bags that are ₹70/kg, ₹80/kg, ₹90/kg, ₹100/kg, and ₹110/kg although they might have a few more varieties. Any idea what the difference might be? I could ask the people there but they don't speak English and I don't speak Hindi. I usually buy the ₹90/kg stuff. This is in Delhi. OK. So what you want if you want a regular every day eating basmati for whatever, just get the cheapest crap they have, and go to town. It will likely be just fine. For domestic market, the cheap stuff will be aged like 3 - 6 months, and be very bright white in colour. As for what type they'll have, it depends on the district you're in. If you're in a more Muslim district, you'll likely find a lot of "Sella" Basmati, which is parboiled. As mentioned, the Middle Eastern folk prefer parboiled, as do the Indian Muslims. Their recipes call for more agitation than the set it and forget it Hindus and Punjabis. Anyway. If you're in a more Hindu district, you're likely to see predominantly raw Basmati. If you want the highest quality, most aged stuff, look for the rice that's off-white in colour. It'll be almost beige to light brown at the very tips. The aging process for Basmati is done on the paddy, not when it's been milled. The flavour develops over time. The longest aged stuff gets slightly discoloured at the tips. Generally, the discoloured tips only happens at around 1 1/2 years. The stuff you'll find in the typical markets in bulk will likely be about a year aged. The other thing you're looking for is whether the rice is consistent. The best Basmati will have few to zero broken grains, discoloured grains, "chalky" grains (that is, grains that don't look like the regular grains of rice, but rather have a fully opaque look as if they were made of chalk), no foreign material (no seriously; this is a MAJOR bone of contention amongst the best rice mills, and they have some pretty sophisticated machinery to make the foreign material count zero). You can check all this stuff for yourself, especially if you're getting rice that freaking cheap. Try the more expensive stuff, and compare it side by side with the cheaper stuff. How? On a piece of paper, set a couple tablespoon fulls of rice of the cheaper stuff, and a couple tablespoon fulls of the more expensive stuff. Give it a visual inspection. Which one seems to be more consistent in shape and colour? Consistency is the sign of good milling practices. Which one looks darker, and which one looks brighter white? Brighter white means less aging. Which one has more broken grains? Broken grains ARE allowed in the final product, but the best stuff has a much lower tolerance for broken grains (broken grains make the rice mushy, not fluffy and separate). Cooking the rice will be entirely too subtle a difference to tell objectively which one is better, but at these rates, a few rupees for a KG of rice isn't going to break the bank, and is always an interesting exercise in learning about rice! TychoCelchuuu posted:Also, do you wash your hair with the liquid you've soaked the rice in? I tried doing it for a bit but it didn't seem to make much of a difference. My flatmate says the same thing: tried it a while, but no perceivable effect. Earwicker posted:my mother-in-law once taught me a method for cooking rice where you fry the dry rice in a little bit of butter (also usually with a very small amount of onion, curry leaves, and cinnamon) before adding the water. just until its a little bit brown, then you add water and finish cooking it normally. basmati rice, always. Yeah, never heard of it called "tempering", but certainly have heard it called toasting the rice. I think the Italians do that step with their Risotto dishes if I'm not mistaken. You can also use the same toasting process for daal! If you have some red lentils or split hulled mung beans, try toasting them dry in a pan or in a little oil of your choice before boiling with water to cook them. The flavour is night and day difference.
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Dec 13, 2023 12:51
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VictualSquid posted:What is parboiled rice, actually? SO. For Basmati rice, the aging process is done to develop flavour, but to also reduce moisture content in the rice. Basmati rice is aged on the paddy. What is rice paddy? Paddy rice is basically the stuff that's still got the hull on the outside, and everything else still intact. The reason that you can age rice like this is that the hull protects the inside, and keeps the oils from being exposed to air. As soon as the hull is breached, the oil is now exposed to the general elements, and can oxidise or go rancid. Anyway. Before anything is done to the rice, it has to age on the paddy. General white rice will be at or around 14% moisture. The bare basics for Basmati to be considered decent is around 12% (give or take). Why? Because what you want from Basmati rice is fluffy separate grains that don't stick together. One way to shortcut the moisture loss process is to steam the rice to some degree. What do I mean by steaming? Just as rice is aged on the paddy, it's also steamed on the paddy. Can rice be both aged AND steamed? Absolutely! First the aging is done, then the steaming is done. For the general Hindu rice eating population of India, they're going to want either raw rice or steam rice. Raw rice is just that: aged Basmati that's been removed from the paddy, then milled to whatever desired degree. Steamed rice is basically raw rice that's been aged, and then steamed for just long enough that the rice is no longer raw, but also not all the way parboiled. Steamed rice grains are stronger than raw rice grains, and most of the market prefers it, even if they think they want raw rice. Why? Because the grains don't break up as easily, making it a more desirable product for home or restaurant cooks. The differences in the looks of steamed versus raw rice are so subtle that most people won't even notice the difference. The longer you parboil rice, the stronger it is. Stronger also means that the texture won't be as soft as when you have raw rice. This is good for some, and undesirable for others. The 2nd stage of steaming is "white" sella, or "creamy" sella. This is when the rice is steamed to the point where the grains are transparent in comparison to raw rice grains. The grains will be stronger than the raw rice, but also be firmer in texture. Also, because they're parboiled, the rice will be SUPER separate. This is the stuff you generally will find in an Indian restaurant. Why do their grains always come out so separate? Because they're probably using steamed or parboiled rice, and you're likely buying raw rice for home use. Look for the bag of "Sella" basmati in the store, and give it a try. It makes a massive difference. The next step of parboiling is "golden" sella. This is the longest parboiling, and the grains turn a yellow colour, because of how long they are in the steaming process. The paddy imparts the colour onto the grains. This is also the type of parboiled rice that you see in American markets. It has a yellow colour, and transparent grains. The cooked product is super chewy, and can stand up to a lot of agitation during the cooking process. If you're buying unspecified parboiled from a mainstream grocery store, this is likely the stuff you're buying. It's the healthiest by far, as it's had the longest time on the paddy, and is likely also enriched with other vitamins and whatnot at the mill. However, you are washing your rice, as you should be, so all those should be rinsed off along with the factory dust etc. therattle posted:This thread is great! Thank you, dino.! i knew you were the man for the job. Cephas posted:Is there some noted trend of Americans being afraid of white rice? I swear ever since I started at my current job, I've met multiple adults (usually 40+) who worry about white rice and only want brown rice--even though the nutritional differences between white and brown rice are rather minuscule compared to the difference between white and whole wheat flour. I think a lot of nutrition scare science is there to freak people out to try to "life hack" their way into better health. At the end of the day, if you're eating a variety of foods, you don't have to worry about the tiny nutritional benefit that brown sugar (for example) provides over white sugar. It's still sugar, folks. Use whatever type makes you happy. Same with the extra virgin olive oil craze. It's still a fat. You shouldn't be using gallons of any kind of fat anyway. Use whatever you like, or whatever suits the application you're using it for, and eat a decent variety of food. You'll likely be fine. You're not gonna reverse years of smoking and drinking by switching to brown rice, while the rest of your diet is monotonous. Earwicker posted:i dont remember white rice ever being "demonized" nor have i ever met anyone who was afraid of it or thought that it was actively bad for you or anything, but there's a general perception that brown rice is healthier for some reason. i have no idea why. maybe because it doesn't taste as good? In 1 serving of brown rice (1/4 cup uncooked), you have double the fibre of white rice. What does that amount to? Like 2 grams total. I can get 2 grams of fibre in my sleep. I don't need rice to do that for me. You also get like a few percent points of iron. Trust me. I'll be fine. I don't need rice to do it for me. I don't know that it's demonised, but during the whole low carb craze, everyone was giving me the side eye for eating rice every day. Eat whatever you want, but leave me alone to do what I want to do. mystes posted:Brown rice has more fiber and protein and there is a general idea that whole grains are healthier? Vegetable posted:I once bought a bag of white people rice that literally had no taste and I couldn’t persuade any of my friends to take it off my hands. I think it was made in California, though I can’t be sure. As an Asian dude who grew on Thai rice it really shed light for me on how hosed up American tastebuds are. If you're comparing Thai rice to long grain white, there is literally no comparison. However, long grain white has its uses, while Thai fragrant rice has its own uses. It's like comparing apples to potatoes. Vegetable posted:I grew up on Thai rice, my daily driver is Japanese rice and my occasional indulgence is basmati rice. It’s possible it was just some rice variant I’m unfamiliar with. I think it was California parboiled. It was unsalvageable. This would be like if I were to take panko breadcrumbs and get mad at them for not tasting good as a piece of white bread in the toaster oven. You got a bag of rice for the wrong application, got mad at the rice, and instead of asking someone what to do with it, called Americans a bunch of babies. I'd respectfully ask you to retract that statement please. Arsenic Lupin posted:There is no such thing as an arsenic problem. Couple of things. - Are you rinsing your rice thoroughly? Your rice rinsing water should be running clear not cloudy. - Are you soaking your rice? You should be soaking raw or steamed Basmati for about 20 minutes, and white or golden Sella basmati for about an hour. - Are you MEASURING your rice? DO NOT use the measurements on the back of the bag. They call for way too much water! You should be using the measuring cup that came with your rice cooker, and using the lines on the side of the rice cooker for the amount of water. If you use 3 rice cooker cups of rice, you need to fill to the 3 cup line on your rice cooker. What is a rice cooker cup? About 3/4 cup dry measure of rice. To make 4 cups of rice, measure out 3 cups of rice (3/4 x 4 = 3), rinse, soak, drain, and then fill water up to the 4 cup water line in the rice pot. Earwicker posted:my in-laws have been using rice cookers to make basmati rice their whole lives and its always great. they do that toasting thing i asked about though, i dont know if that helps with the texture
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Dec 13, 2023 13:34
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Skinnymansbeerbelly posted:Is there any chance of the low-arsenic parboiling techniques actually getting adoped in the commercial market, i.e., this? So. The arsenic thing. Yes, there is arsenic in rice. Brown rice will have more than white rice. However, we're not talking enough quantity for it to show up. We're talking in the fraction of one part per million. Once you rinse, soak, drain the soaking liquid, that quantity will go down even further. Once you cook it, the quantity goes down even more than that. The lab results for the dry versus cooked rice show that the cooked rice doesn't have enough arsenic to even register on the lab equipment. If you do the pasta cooking method for rice, you'll have even less arsenic. What's the pasta cooking method? You take a massive quantity of water, and salt it generously. You want like a gallon or so of water. Then you add your 2 cups of rinsed/soaked/drained rice to the pot of rapidly boiling water. You cook it until the rice is just shy of how tender you want it to be. Why? The rice will continue to cook once you've drained it. You want it cooked through, but not mushy. As soon as it's done to your desired consistency, you strain it through a mesh strainer. Drain out as much water as you can, and cover then dump the works onto a cookie sheet if you want separate fluffy rice, or into a warmed bowl if you just wanted the rice to be cooked through. Serve after letting it sit for like five minutes.
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Dec 13, 2023 13:43
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Carillon posted:Do you have any recommendations for a good rice for rice pudding? I know a lot of it is picking the right recipe, but I imagine the right rice can make a big difference as well. As it’s eaten cold sometimes, go with any medium or short grain rice. The starches on the surface of long grain rice will tend to crystallise and make the texture hella gross for cold applications.
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Dec 14, 2023 00:06
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DekeThornton posted:Nice thread, Dino! 1121 basmati is a really good variety, and has freakishly long grains. Sella is the Hindi word for parboiled. Soak the rice for about an hour, and discard the soaking water. It will make the cooking happen way more evenly. This is also the perfect rice with which to make Tahdig. Look up a recipe and make it. You will be happy you did.
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Dec 14, 2023 13:17
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Thesaurus posted:Why should I rinse my rice? I've literally never done it Rice is an agricultural product. It will have dirt and bug poop and all kind of other gross stuff stuck to the grains even after milling. It won’t kill your, but it is gross to think about having it in your food.
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Dec 14, 2023 13:28
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She’s probably eating a short grain glutinous rice, if I’m not mistaken? For the foods from that region, I’d wager that the short grain rice works better than Thai jasmine. Fragrant rice is good for when you have strong spices that can stand up to it. If you’re not using a ton of spices in your cooking, you want a more quiet rice.
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Dec 15, 2023 09:18
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Rawrbomb posted:You're also washing some of the external starch off right? I know some types of rice that we buy like the "fancier" calrose states not to wash it. Earwicker posted:yea i always grew up washing it but there's a random Brazilian recipe i looked up and have made a couple times (for a carrot and garlic rice) and it specifically tells you not to wash the rice. thats the only time i didnt wash it and it was ok i guess, didnt taste any different felt kind of weird tho Bollock Monkey posted:How can the typical consumer find out about a particular rice? For example, I've got Badshah basmati in currently, which just says '...lovingly sourced from the foothills of the Himalayas, home to the world's best basmati. Once harvested our rice is aged to perfection...' and I'd be really interested to find out more about its provenance and process. I assume that's tricky, though, as for most mass-produced food? To be honest, the way to find out about rice is to buy some, and look at it. All the fancy lingo on the packaging is all just advertising. It doesn't mean crapola unless they specify how long something's been aged. Also, the rice importer can order basically whatever quality they want, and the miller will produce it for them, because the quality is basically based on how much of the bulk product gets rejected by the line. What causes a grain to be rejected? If it's damaged, broken, discolored, chalky, or a paddy grain. Here's some stuff to look for. - Pour out a couple of handfuls, and put it onto a plate. - How many broken grains do you see? Ideally you should be at like 2% or less of the grains being broken grains. The fewer the broken grains, the higher the quality. - How many grains are yellow or brown or otherwise discolored? This does not refer to the rice grains that have a light brown or beige color in the tips of the product. That's simply a sign of longer aging. I'm talking about the whole grain itself is not white or off-white. The higher the quantity of weird colors in the rice grains means that you have a lower quality of rice, because their color sorting machine is allowing more undesirable grains through. - How many grains are "chalky" grains? This means that the grain is completely opaque, and looks like it's made of chalk. These are extremely undesirable in the final product, because they don't absorb water as readily during the soaking process, and will tend to break and release starch, making your pot of rice mushy. You want as few chalky grains as possible. - What is the length? Longer Basmati is always more prized than shorter. Avg length of basic grains that are the cheap $1/lb rice should be around 7 mm in length. The super long ones are around 8.5 mm and above. I'm not saying you should get a ruler, but knowing roughly what you're looking for can give you an idea of where the rice stands in terms of quality. If it's brown Basmati, it's going to be even longer by about 1/2 mm. - Aroma. Basmati should have a distinct aroma. If it smells like moldy hay, it's bad quality rice. If it smells like plastic, it's bad quality. If it has a delicate, floral nutty aroma right in the bag, it's good quality. - How bright white are the grains? Properly aged Basmati is never pure white. It's why when you get certain brands that come in a blue bag and are ubiquitous in American markets, the rice grains look so bright white when they're poured out of the bag. They're technically aged, because all Basmati is aged, but it's aged for like 3 months. Trash. A lot of Basmati brands will have clear windows on the sides of the bag so that you can do a visual inspection of the rice before you buy it. DekeThornton posted:Thanks! I'll try soaking it the next time I make it. Here's the cool thing: white rice, when kept in an airtight container away from moisture and heat will have a shelf life of roughly 35 years at its best taste and quality. It's still safe to consume after that, but it won't be at its peak. That said, for rice that relies on higher moisture content for stickier grains, you want the freshest you can get your hands on. It won't be unsafe or bad to eat, but it won't be as good as freshly milled product. Any of your short and medium grain rices you'll want to eat as soon as you can. However, like I said, it's not unsafe, but it won't be as perfect as the fresh stuff. mystes posted:a typical one would be nori, bonito flakes, sesame seeds, and seasoning so maybe try that to start Dans Macabre posted:Why do rice bag instructions call for too much water? For stove top rice cooking, in the odd case that I don't have a rice cooker, I'll do pasta method. Lots and lots and lots of water, rapidly boiling, with rice thrown in along with a bit of salt and a few drops of oil. Once it's done, the excess water gets drained off, and the rice served. Otherwise, I use the rice cooker's measuring cup, and fill to the appropriate line in the rice cooker pot. PokeJoe posted:I follow the instructions of the rice cooker is that right PokeJoe posted:My home has only 4 kinds of rice. What is the appropriate number of varieties to stock? CommonShore posted:Do you have any opinions on North American wild rice? If it's IN something, I'm quite fond of wild rice. I don't care for it on its own. The texture is too challenging. However, in a multi grain rice mix? That stuff is baller as heck. Over the years I've found myself growing fond of short grain rice. The fat little grains are so freaking cute, and it cooks up nice and soft while not being mushy. When I have time, I'll do like a Korean multigrain rice situation, where it's mostly short grain white glutinous rice, short grain brown rice, some split hulled mung beans, some purple rice/black rice/forbidden rice, barley, and a spot of millet to round things out. It's primarily the white glutinous rice that's the base with al the other grains in smaller quantities. You mix it all up and cook it together. It's delightful. If you can get your hands on some good quality Basmati rice, try your hand at Tahdig. I made some at Wroughtirony's parents' house, and it got eaten up very quickly. Essentially it's a 2 step cooking process. First you rinse the Basmati thoroughly, and soak it for like 30 minutes. If you use parboiled Basmati, you soak it an hour. Then drain off all the soaking liquid. You then bring a large stock pot full of water [with plenty of salt (salty like if you're making pasta), a few sprinkles of ground cardamom, and a few drops of olive oil] to a full rushing boil. You boil the rice for like 5 or 6 minutes. You want the outside to be jusssst cooked, and the inside to be firm, but not hard like a raw grain. You want the rice to be undercooked. Then you combine like 1/4 of the cooked rice with a couple tablespoons of good olive oil and a TB or so of saffron water. (Saffron water is saffron threads that have been ground in a pestle and mortar, and then steeped in hot boiling water. 2 big pinches of saffron will steep in like 1/4 cup of water.) You spread that over the bottom of a nonstick pan. Then you dump the remaining rice on top of the carefully spread out saffron-y rice, and add the remaining rice atop that. You sprinkle on the remaining saffron water, about 1/4 cup of water, and another healthy TB of olive oil. Cover the top of the pot with a kitchen towel, and put the lid on top. Set over your lowest slowest simmer burner, and let it simmer away for like 45 minutes. When it's done cooking, the rice will be fragrant, and there'll be a super crispy disc of rice on the bottom.
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Dec 15, 2023 17:57
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I violently hate parboiled, so I always use raw basmati. But if you do end up going that route, look for Aahu Barah Sella Basmati. Pretty much everyone who uses parboiled swears by that brand.
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Dec 16, 2023 00:22
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If it’s a crowded shop, ask someone what brand they buy. Double bonus if it’s a dude. He’ll talk your ear off. If it’s not, talk to the shop keeper and ask which one they’d suggest. Smaller shops have proprietors who curate the stuff in there. They’re proud of the good stuff they have, and want you to try it too, so that you come back to their shop and get more. It’s like that next level Moroccan olive oil we found in Portland. You could tell the shop keeper was like “you guys made a good choice.” If it’s a very big shop, legit someone will know someone in the shop who can help you. IMO, for Jasmine, try to find the stuff with the green Hom Mali seal on it. Look for the furthest expiry date you can find. White rice lasts a long time, but Jasmine rice is best when it’s fresh. Generally the best by date will be 24 months from the processing date. For Basmati, look for Lal Mahal, India Gate, Kohinoor, or Dunar Elonga. Barring that, ask for help with the specific dish you’re looking to make, and they’ll lead you right.
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Dec 17, 2023 15:02
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Decoy Badger posted:What's the best way to save undercooked rice? Throw more water in and flip the cooker back on? Bingo. quote:Fried rice - cold precooked rice to start, or is there a faster way? Fastest way is to buy precooked rice either in those microwave pouches, or frozen cooked rice. Next fastest is to go the parboiled rice route, because even when cooked, the grains won’t fall apart on you. That said, the texture of the final dish will have the texture of parboiled rice which you’ll either like or hate. There are no in betweens. Next down in speed but still having really good flavour is to cook your rice in the rice cooker, and immediately transfer it to a cookie sheet so that it cools down quickly. If you have a small table fan, you can set it up to blow air over the surface so it cools down even faster. quote:Freezing cooked rice - good idea? Yes! In fact, I do it all the time. quote:Is there some kind of treatment to stop those little bugs from hatching in my brown rice that doesn't involve permanent freezing? Yes. Freeze it for 3 weeks and then transfer to an air tight container. quote:Do you know anything about rice wine vinegar, what kinds or brands to try? I’m out of my depth on this one. I don’t use a ton of vinegar in my cooking. quote:What is the purpose of those plastic liner bags on the inside of plastic rice sacks? They're always perforated and shredded, do they even do anything? Protect the rice from any stuff on the surface of the outer bag. quote:You're stuck in a hotel room, It's 3 am and restaurants are closed, how do you make a portion of rice? quote:What else can I do with all these old 8kg rice sacks i keep accumulating? I'm already making accessories out of them, like this rucksack:
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Dec 18, 2023 05:59
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buglord posted:im a rice newbie that uses a rice cooker for his rice and sometimes puts a chicken bullion cube in it or puts onion powder in for flavor. i really put no further thought into making rice. I use the same white rice (i couldn't even tell you the type) for everything when I make rice and have it as a side dish. Simple: dump a packet of sazon con achiote in the rice cooker along with your rice and water. Game changer. Yes, salt your cooking water too. Also add like a tablespoon of olive oil in with the rice. Better: fry off some cumin seeds in a bit of canola oil until the cumin is fragrant. Combine with the cooked rice. Sooooo good. God tier: grind some saffron (like a pinch or two) in a mortar and pestle, and combine with like a tablespoon of water. Toss through the cooked rice. It’ll be delightful.
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Dec 18, 2023 06:02
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mystes posted:Isn't most sazon quite salty already unless you specifically buy the no salt version? Yah it’s salty. If you add Sazón, don’t salt the water very much.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:17
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buglord posted:I bought 16 packets of sazon con achiote for $3.38 after tax. This will have to do. Listen. Saffron rice is not a daily driver thing. You should be using the best basmati rice you can find. The best saffron from a Middle Eastern or Indian market. The best olive oil. It’s a luxury. Sazón on rice is like a quick and basic level up for your rice. Throw in a TB of olive oil, and a few pinches of oregano to level it up further.
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Dec 20, 2023 14:22
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Carillon posted:Is ok to put a little salt in my rice as it steams? I did it once a long time ago and my friend's mom from Korea acted like it was the worst sin. It was just a pinch. I add way way way more than a pinch. Please salt your rice.
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Dec 22, 2023 11:08
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Meaty Ore posted:If I want to make risotto, will any short-grain rice do? I'm interested in branching out from widely available Arborio, and Carnaroli isn't available locally; I'd have to order it. Will sushi rice work for risotto? I’ve had it made with sushi rice and it comes out fine. Costco should have arborio. Re: saffron. If it’s not Persian or Kashmiri all red saffron, I’d avoid it. Spanish and Greek really don’t follow the international grading standards, so they end up with white parts sneaking in. When you’re paying that much for a spice to be used in very special occasions, go spend the big bucks and get the good stuff.
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Dec 23, 2023 14:30
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Annath posted:Well, everything I've read about rinsing rice specifically says to rinse until the water runs clear. So this is down to your pot size for rinsing rice. Most people use a cute little bowl or a strainer. This is not sufficient. For my 3 cups of rice I make, I use a giant stainless steel mixing bowl. I add plenty of water and swish the rice grains around. I decant it almost completely. Then, I do it again 3 or 4 more times. By the end of that, the water will run clear. M Re: black rice I’m not 100% familiar with all the kinds, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t just one variety. It’s not a thing I’ve looked too deeply into, but is a rabbit hole that should be interesting as heck. Re: Soaking of rice White rice should be soaked about 20 minutes if it’s like a basmati. Jasmine is about the same. Parboiled rice should be soaked an hour or so. Glutinous rice should be at least 4 hours if not overnight. Any brown rice in my opinion, should get an overnight soak for best results. Re: Salt Always add a good bit of salt to the cooking water. Rice is a starch! It needs salt. Re: Rice cookers I’ve owned both expensive ones from Zoji and Cuckoo. I’ve owned cheap ones where it’s a basic aluminium pot with a glass lid. The Aroma enclosed model is the best value for money. It won’t keep rice warm indefinitely, but it does cook the rice consistently and well. It barely costs more than the glass lidded garbage, and is an absolute beast in the kitchen. The high end brands are good also, but in my opinion not worth the 3 - 10 times higher price tag. Re: spices Yeah, I’ll usually add spices after cooking if they’re whole. If it’s ground spices, they’re good to go in before cooking. It’s an absolute game changer. Re: Basmati I’m not talking as a rice importer, but as a person who likes rice. I would avoid the rice in mainstream markets, as they’ll generally spending a lot of money on advertising and not product itself. Find an Indian store, and ask the shop keeper what brand they use at home.
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Dec 27, 2023 14:49
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Annath posted:This is what I use: Yeah there’s your problem. You need to flood the rice with water, swish it around, and then decant it. That bowl is small to begin with, and isn’t letting you fill up with water. You’re not defrosting peas. You’re washing rice. @wiggles: I see you’re taking a walk on the wild side Mystes: I avoid using the rice pot, because moisture can and will damage the electronics on the bottom of the rice cooker. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But some day. I’d rather extend the life of the cooker. Re: salt - idk I thought food was supposed to need to be salted to hell and back because my dad had the same wrong idea that salt is the demon. So no salting food during cooking ever. Meanwhile homeboy was scarfing down salted peanuts by the truckload. loving hypocrite. When I moved out on my own, and learned that I can salt as I go along, and add enough to bring up the flavour in food, it was a game changer. Food actually tasted nice.
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Dec 29, 2023 14:35
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Buttchocks posted:Are weevils an issue since you are importing and aging a metric fuckton of rice? I had weevils in my rice once and it was a mess. 20 metric tons to be exact. Per container. And we do like 30 - 50 containers a week in imports. You ever want to got a rice person riled up, ask them what are the mitigation procedures for bugs in rice. Hooooo mama. Buckle up kids, this is going to be a loving ride. As soon as the rice is milled to the degree it needs to be, and is ready for shipping or storage, it has to be treated. Period, the end, no questions. Why? Because rice insects are many and varied, and tenacious little fucks. For organic product, you can't use traditional chemical fumigants, even though it doesn't show up in testable amounts in the final product. For organic product, you have to fumigate in CO2, a warm temp, for like 14 days minimum. Why? Because CO2 doesn't kill eggs, so you need to fume that sucker until the eggs that still eggsist while fuming will hatch, and the larva can be killed off. Also, any pupa won't really be killed off, so you have to wait for the pupa to become adults so that they can get killed off. Oh. You don't have 14 days to fume this stuff because the customer needed their rice like yesterday, and you should have dispatched last week, but it was some lamp festival or something, and half your staff was "out sick" even though you told them you need to fulfil this goddamned contract on time. Fine. In that case, it's reefer time! A 40' refrigerated container (also known as a "reefer" in the logistics business) can be ordered in cases where you need to freeze the rice to avoid/kill bugs. How long? Traditionally, rice sold in totes needs at least 30 days at -18C to kill off infection. Why do I say traditionally? IT IS NOT ENOUGH TIME ANYMORE. The loving bugs have evolved in the past 15 or so years to where they can survive 30 days. You need a minimum of 45 days under -18C temperature kept constant to make sure you go scorched earth (so to speak) on the rice.This is good news for you, because you're in India or Thailand, and the usual transit time to the USA is about 45 days. However, reefers cost more than dry containers, and are in significantly shorter supply, and all accessorial charges are doubled because they're charged by the TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit) since they're 40' and not 20' like standard dry containers. Also also, you're going to get bumped if the vessel is overbooked, because they can snurgle a 20' into whatever little pockets of space on the vessel, but the reefers need to be in specific spots where they can get plugged in to run the motor for the journey. Also, rice is a commodity food, not a luxury food. This means that the profit margins are razor thin. You can't really afford that much of a hit because Priya from production was going to her 15th grandmother's funeral that month. You'll do it if you HAVE to, but the CO2 fume is a lot cheaper and straightforward to do. However, say you have conventional product that you're shipping out. That's "easier" but also hella dangerous. In India, they spray the absolute bejeebers out of the field with every pesticide, herbicide, and fungicide known to mankind. Basmati is a low yield crop, and sensitive to drat near everything. They're not taking any chances on losing out on product that they can sell next year (Basmati is aged, so this year's crops won't be sold at least until next year if you're a good Basmati producer). Then, when it gets into the plant, they fumigate the finished rice. What fumigant? In India, they use Methyl Bromide. Methyl Bromide is deadly toxic. As in, you inhale a little bit, and you have permanent lung damage. You inhale a little over a long time, and you're going to have brain damage. This poo poo is not a joke at all. When you're fumigating with it, you have to ensure that the entire works is AIR TIGHT. No leaks. Every time they put something under fume, they have to quadruple check that there's no air leaks at all. In a rice manufacturing or processing facility, they'll have special rooms dedicated to fumigation, so that they can mitigate any risks of inhalation by the people working there. Fumigation can also be done in the container itself (and it is!). You first fumigate the rice as it's done processing. It's 48 hours of fumigation, and then 24 hours to air it out once it's done. Then, you throw the totes into the container, and fume the container as well. When the container arrives in the USA, the USDA and customs and border patrol will demand to see the fumigation certificate to show the concentration of the fumigant, the temperature, and how long the product has been fumed. If it's missing a fume certificate, now they're suspicious, and will be going through your container with a fine-toothed comb (also called an intensive exam). This is going to cost you an extra $1000 or so per container (if it's a 20' dry) up to $3600 (for a reefer), so loving have your docs in order, or pay the price. (In certain ports, all containers from India just automagically get "randomly" selected for intensive exam, regardless of how good the docs are.) In Thailand, they use Phosphine, and let it run for 14 days. Phosphine IS still a toxic gas, but not nearly as much as methyl bromide. However, it takes a lot longer for it to do its job. Again, they'll include the fume certificate with the documents package when they send the container out. Hooray, you're done now right? No more infestation. NOPE. WRONG. YES MORE INFESTATION. Once the product comes to the final country, it's usually good practice to fume it (in the container) again. Why? It's been on a boat for 45 - 60 days. While technically you only need to fume every 60 days or so, you can't guarantee the safety of your stuff aboard a cargo vessel. What if other bugs came from other containers and hung out in this one? US Customs doesn't give a crap about flour beetles or rice weevils. They only care if there's Khapra beetle, and wood pests (found in the pallets if they're not heat treated). It can be literally crawling with rice weevils, to the point where you can't see the colour of the totes anymore, and customs don't give a poo poo, because it's not the bug they're concerned with preventing. So, to prevent that situation, you fume it as soon as it comes into your hands. What if it's organic? Off to the cold storage you go! Again, even if it's been treated with CO2 overseas, re-infestation is a serious concern, so all our customers require a minimum of 30 days in freezing (either in transit or in the warehouse in the USA) before they'll accept a load. Well, what if even after all this, you STILL find bugs? If you're a large sized operation, you don't care as long as there's no live bugs, because you're about to throw the rice through your own cleaning machines anyway (AKA sifters, X-ray, metal detector, etc), so if they're dead, they're going to be pulled out of the product anyways. If you're a rinky dink small little repacker (so you only order like 100,000 lbs a month or less-there's one customer who we're all whining to get rid of, because they only order like 90,000 lbs of rice in a month, and are a giant pain in my rear end to service, but since they're one of our first customers, bossman wants to keep servicing their account) and don't have cleaning machinery (because smaller ones don't have space), you'll reject if there's live OR dead insects. So now does the rice get thrown out? Nope. We send it to the cleaners. That's gonna cost you like $5K - $10K per load to clean, which pretty much demolishes your profit margins, but you don't want to throw away food that can be saved. So yes. Bugs are an issue. therattle posted:Weevils or pantry moths? We just dealt with an infestation of the fuckers (moths), having had one some years ago. (These came in in some shelled walnuts we bought in France in August). Luckily, having learned from previous experience, most of our open bags of food were in sealed containers. I buy rice from the refill shop (where one takes one's own containers), and when I open it to take rice there are silk threads from the moth larvae - so sealing containers is not just to keep moths and their larvae out, but also to keep them in and stop them escaping into your pantry. So I also wondered if pantry moths were a problem. When I bring rice to my house, it goes directly into the freezer. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go sit in the freezer right now. It sits there for at least 3 days, if not a week. I don't care if it's organic or conventional. It's getting frozen good and solid. THEN I'll move it to the fridge for overnight so that it comes up to temp gradually. Then it gets transferred to an airtight container with an oxygen absorber if I'm going to keep it in that container longer than 3 months, or just by itself it it's less than 3 months. When I say airtight, I mean that it's a box that has a rubber gasket, so that nothing is entering or leaving that container, period. My parents sucked at food storage, so our rice consistently had bugs in when I was growing up. Making a pot of rice took forever, because you had to rinse so many times to get rid of the bugs. I'm freakishly paranoid about bugs, so I make sure to treat my grains with the utmost of disrespect. loving sit in that freezer and think about what you've done. >  DekeThornton posted:I just came across this video on a new to me channel mostly about Mexican food and would like to give it a try. (I really like what I saw from the channel in general. A really nice vibe and nice looking recipies, at least to a Mexican cuisine novice like me.) My question is, what kind of rice is she using? We don't really get Mexican rice here in Sweden but to me it looks fairly similar to various risotto rices. Could those be used as a substitute? DekeThornton posted:Yeah, I guess I should have been more specific. I wondered about the type of rice they typically use in mexico. What kind of medium or long grain? Would basmati work? Some Japanese medium grain rice? Arborio? therattle posted:I definitely get less rice crust when I wash my rice well. Helluva posted:Is there anything special about black rice? What spices would go with it?
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Jan 13, 2024 15:38
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david_a posted:What about rice from California? Surely at least the distribution process must be somewhat easier. Cali rice is legit. You’ll be in good hands with it. In the USA, most rice is fumigated with either ProFume (sulfuryl fluoride) or phosphine. Methyl bromide is available in some areas, but most of the USA has banned its use. Organic is CO2 fumed and then stored in temp control or freezers.
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Jan 16, 2024 09:54
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RE Name change: I wrote the title the way I did, because I wanted it to look like something bland and boring (like rice), but actually be varied and interesting (like rice!!!) once you start to dig deeper. I find it way more hilarious to have a title like this one, with several people asking really insightful questions, and even cross-talking to each other about rice, but the title is "Ask me about rice." IDK, I guess I have an odd sense of humor? VictualSquid posted:We mostly bought 20kg bags of broken rice when I was a kid, because it is cheaper. I assume it gets sorted at one of those sifting stages. Does that happen in the producer country or during the repacking at the destination country? So here's the thing about rice. I can get you whatever quality you require. For example, if you're going to be selling to a market that's picky (for example, Iranian or Indian), I can get you 2 years aged, with zero chalky grains, negligible brokens, and whatever color you're looking to get. It's just a question of the rejected grains. For example, if I bring in stuff for a customer (the guys who only order like 80k - 90k lbs a month, and whom I wish we'd stop working with, because it's a lot of work for 2 freaking containers), all their product is hand sorted on the line, so it means that there can be ZERO discolored or weird lookin' grains. For most industrial lines, as long as you've got the vast majority of the stuff in good shape, they're not going to bitch you out for a couple off looking grains. This means that in a 44,000 lb batch of rice that I've already imported from overseas, I'm going to have like 2,000 lbs of rejected grains, because they're the only ones who need it to be that level of insanity. Why are they rejected? The color isn't exactly what they wanted it to be (based on the spec sheet which we agreed on when the contract was signed). There's grains that aren't the agreed upon length. There's grains that are in other ways not exactly according to spec. So fine. Now we've got 2,000 lbs of perfectly edible rice, but that I can't necessarily do anything with. What do I do with it? In the USA, it gets sold off to animal feed at pennies on the kg. In a rice producing country, however, it gets sorted into broken rice bags. The milling process will necessarily have some broken grains, but the finicky customers can't really accept it. But, because that rice producing country is making SO MUCH rice, they have enough broken grains to warrant having a special line to process them and pack them. What are the bulk of broken grains used for? Flour! You don't need long perfect grains of rice for flour milling. In fact, the broken grains are superior, because it's less work for your machines to do to get them down to rice flour. Same goes for those companies that do rice cereals, or hot rice porridge type dishes. They want the broken grains, because that's halfway to where they'd like it to be in the first place. The next step down is the Asian and African market. Asia and Africa orders a LOT of broken grains from rice producing countries. However, as much of Asia IS a rice producing area, a bunch of the product gets consumed domestically. Nowadays, the price difference between broken rice and whole rice isn't significant enough for most suppliers to waste their time importing it. Rice is a commodity business to begin with. Their margins only work when they move a lot of product. Bringing in a low margin product from overseas isn't worth it, when you consider the cost of importing the stuff. bloody ghost titty posted:Dino! Thanks a ton for this. I just learned about parboiled basmati yesterday in a Syrian grocer, so I was stoked to find this and all the details. PurpleXVI posted:Very interesting reading. Personally I just leave a top-cut-off bag of Basmati rice in my pantry for two months while I work my way through it. Surprisingly I've yet to see any bugs in it, but that may be down to living in a reasonably cold country that's inhospitable to a lot of rice-eating insects, or maybe I just haven't noticed the extra protein. It's sort of like those people who are like "well, I can eat that soup I left out overnight. It hasn't hurt me yet." You'll be fine until you aren't fine. The thing about rice weevils and grain beetles is that they are EXTREMELY tenacious. You get an infestation of one, and basically they will never leave. They can live off of particles of grain or flour that's in the air. They can burrow into tiny little crevices all over your house, and come out at the weirdest places. I'm not here to tell you how to live your life, but unless you're at one of the earth poles (north or south), put your grain into air tight containers to avoid bug infestation, because they are an absolute beast to get rid of once they take hold in your house. Ask me about having to fumigate an entire rear end warehouse, because someone didn't fumigate a container properly when they loaded it overseas, and the entire place got infested. Chip McFuck posted:Thinking about Mexican rice recipes got me wondering why there are bags of rice a the grocery store that don't advertise what kind of rice they are? The only thing they really specify is the length of the grain on the packaging. Are they just blends of whatever didn't pass inspection (broken grains, not aged as long as they should have, etc.) or something? Happiness Commando posted:This is gross. Do you have a suggestion for a good organic basmati that I could get online or in a generic large city in the US? That said, if you're worried about the pesticides thrown on the ground, also bear in mind that organic farming DOES allow the use of pesticides, as long as the compound occurs in nature. At that point, it could be some hippie juicing a neem tree to get the stuff to spray on his flowers, or it could be Dow chemicals synthesizing the stuff in a lab. Either way, as long as the compound is naturally occurring, it's allowed to be used as a pesticide. If you're still insisting on getting organic, get any of the mainstream store own brand stuff from a mainstream American/Canadian store. The onboarding process and QA requirements for those companies is extreme and extensive. It'll cost more than what you'd pay at an Indian or Middle Eastern market, but from my experience, the QA process is not a freaking joke at those companies, and they tend to be really really strict with what they allow. All that being said, if you wash your rice thoroughly, the amount of any pesticide residues goes down to undetectable, and in the final cooked rice, completely gone. Rinse your rice. The only reason we can't really do that is that rice is a low moisture food, and stays with an indefinite shelf life, because there's not enough water to let bacterial action take hold. Buttchocks posted:I am discovering that rice is both fascinating and really complicated. buglord posted:I bought jasmine rice for the first time because of this thread and im gonna use it in my new rice cooker (my other one became inoperable after i accidentally dented the basket)and im gonna pair this jasmine rice with trader joes broccoli beef. Hyperlynx posted:Hello rice thread! This has been fascinating reading. for fucks sake posted:It sounds like what the organic rice makes up for in avoiding toxic chemicals, it loses in higher energy costs. I wonder if that's the same for other organic food. It's the same for any organic grain. You can't let it get bugs in it, so you kind of have to keep it chilled. Exception to the rule is if it's already been packed in airtight or CO2/nitrogen flushed packaging. If you ever seen those brick shaped bags of Jasmine rice from Thailand, that have zero air left in there because they're vacuum sealed, or those bags of rice in the mainstream markets that are goofy and you can't press the air out of them? Those are what I'm talking about. The vacuum sealed ones suck out all the oxygen, so that bugs can't live. The CO2 or nitrogen flushes bags have all the oxygen replaced with either CO2 or nitrogen. Neither gas will let bugs live. The only issue is when you get rice that's in clear plastic bags in an Indian market. The shop guys don't like the bags to take up too much space on the shelf, so they poke tiny holes into the bags, squish out the air, and then stack them one on top of the other. Lovely. Visions of Valerie posted:It really depends on the farmer. If they're going "letter of the law" on the organic certification, there's plenty of dangerous chemicals etc. they can still use. The world is made of chemicals, after all; the organic stamp just limits what synthetics can be used. How can you know which is which? You can't. Just wash the drat rice, and move on. This stuff goes way too hard in way too many directions, and there's way too many people whose interests are being protected in the name of following the standards set out by the certifying bodies. It's exhausting to even get started. Buy local as much as you can for your organic stuff. Visit their farm if you want. Talk to the farmer if you can. Or, just wash your food, and move on.
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Jan 16, 2024 21:00
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ntan1 posted:What is your favorite species of Japanese rice that isn't koshihikari? Milky Queen.
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Jan 19, 2024 13:02
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PurpleXVI posted:...I mean, okay, theoretically, let's say a rice weevil gets into my rice, and I boil it along with the rice, and eat it without noticing. Is that just going to be a real gross thing if I DO notice or are they potentially dangerous in some way to eat? I promise you, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life. Do what you wish, and that's on you. If you haven't had issues thus far, it's likely because the Danish import laws are such that pest mitigation is stricter than the US ones. Here's a fun story. With any major food manufacturing, there's a series of procedures that you follow, called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP). How it works is that you think logically about your manufacturing, shipping, and other such situations, and figure out what are the points along the way where you could harm someone if things go to hell. For example, in any food manufacturing facility, anyone entering the places where the food itself is being handled, people have to wash their hands, put on a hair net or other hair covering, throw on a disposable smock over their clothes, wear little booties over their shoes, put on a pair of gloves, and pass through a forced air machine. Why? Because any crap you have on you could potentially enter the food stream, and harm someone. Rather than take that risk, it's easier to prevent it, so that the food you eat is safe. Part of the HACCP procedure is identifying the consequences of what happens in case a particular risk isn't mitigated successfully. For example, all food manufacturing has to have a glass and brittle plastic policy, because if glass or brittle plastic ends up in the food, the customer could choke on it or otherwise be seriously harmed by it. The thing with dry (as opposed to frozen cooked or ready to eat) rice is that most of our HACCP is involved with bog standard food facility stuff. Almost none of our processes have to worry about pathogens, because the moisture content of the rice is low enough that it's rare in the extreme that anything can grow on it. And, even if something DOES grow on it, the kill step is performed by the consumer. What's a kill step? In food manufacturing, before something is considered safe to eat, you have to put it through a kill step, to kill off any pathogens that may be on the food. What's a very effective kill step? Cooking the absolute heck out of something. Rice goes through a kill step when you cook it. Here's a very cool article about kill steps: https://www.fdareader.com/blog/2017/07/25/on-the-kill-step-and-leftovers Long story longer, the weevils won't harm you. Bonus points if you wash your rice before eating (which you should be doing anyways). Doom Rooster posted:dino., what is the best rice, and why is it Sona Masoori? Those are fighting words, especially to a guy from Tamil Nadu. We rep Ponni rice, and we rep it HARD. Inceltown posted:Thanks for all the words on this Dino. Only checked the thread out because you always make good posts and figured "well I eat rice, maybe I'll learn something interesting". Sure glad I did because this is fascinating. This is the kindest thing someone has said to me in a very long time. You know me as some Internet weirdo, but you enjoy the content of what I write, and you told me that you do. From the 10 year old me, who sat by himself at lunch and had no friends because I was interested in reading books instead of playing sports, thank you for sending kindness my way. I appreciate your letting me know that you like my posts. <3 quote="Inceltown" post="537210099"]Not going to fault a South East Asian farmer for not trusting Monsanto near their land. [/quote] Oh, I'm talking that they distrust any pesticides at all, because so many different countries have banned so many different pesticides. It makes it easier for the Thai government to heavily restrict the use of pesticides, ban the most commonly banned ones from the countries they export to, and in general just keep things safer for their own population. This is on a country level, not an individual farmer level. It's not to say that Thailand is some glorious paradise, but their government is pretty strict on what can and can't be used in agriculture. For example, the FDA banned the use of isoprothiolane. Thailand banned it almost immediately, because the FDA has a zero tolerance policy for isoprothiolane. Thailand has such a good reputation for their agriculture that the vast majority of their imports get hand waved through FDA, Customs and Border Patrol, and USDA. As long as they pass scrutiny of documents inspection, they're usually allowed through with very little fuss. In fact, most of my Thai containers clear customs and FDA a few days before the ocean vessel lands in the USA. India, on the other hand, has a serious issue because of the corruption that runs rampant there. You have to have all your containers go through customs exam at a customs exam warehouse, and it's freakishly expensive to do so. Visions of Valerie posted:That's a bit reductive, and ignores what the goals were beyond what became codified into USDA rules. That e.g. copper sulphate (note: a synthetic) is permitted is one of the reasons I and others wish the standards were stricter. Note also in both production methods that just because something safer/less damaging can be used doesn't mean that it is used. There remains no way to know for sure without knowing the farmer. Be that as it may, this IS the issue we're dealing with right now. Organic doesn't mean what people think it means, and I wish more people knew that. Whatever the goals were, it's become what it is due to capitalism. People know that they can put a significant upcharge on organic food, because they know that the consumer is willing to pay for it due to fear mongering about chemicals, GMO, etc. It's the same issue that I have with terms like "Free Range" or "Natural". They're not regulated well enough to be meaningful, and slapping those labels onto food means that they can charge a butt-ton more money for it. It's much like "non GMO". There are several crops that have no GMO equivalents (Basmati rice is one such example). However, without the certification, we can't say it's non GMO, because the certifiers would get butthurt and sue. So I get phone calls every few days from panicked Brenda asking if the Basmati they bought from Patel Brothers or whatever has scary horrible GMO and I don't want little Paxtynn to die because he ate lunch at the brown people's house. The premium labels are loving annoying, and I'll consistently roll my eyes at the insistence that they be on the food. If you want stuff that's grown like if it's in your home garden, go seek out local farmers who do it, and pay the higher prices that they command so that you can support local businesses as much as possible. There's a ton of farmers out there doing really cool work, and they're passionate about what they do. They grow weird heritage varieties of food, because nobody else cares about those weird things. Hyperlynx posted:Hm. I've just been keeping my rice in the sack. Maybe time to upgrade to a sack-sized hard plastic container... So here's the issue. The bugs' eggs are already in the rice by the time it gets to your pantry. Also, they're all over the place. Regardless of how high your apartment is, bugs can get there. Also, in the case of pantry moths, they can literally fly. Whenever you bring rice home, throw it in the freezer for a minimum of 3 days to kill off whatever is in there, and then toss it in an airtight container. uber_stoat posted:bugs are good at hitching rides to places they want to be. also if you're unlucky they might already be in your food when you buy it. put it in the freezer and then put it into the plastic tub. All of this. Earwicker posted:that depends on where you live. i lived in several large buildings in nyc that had all kinds of bugs living in the walls. mice too, they can chew through a sack. i've never had them go after rice tho. #same therattle posted:Yeah. Sometimes (often) they are in the food and a sealed container is as much to keep them in and preventing them from spreading as it is to keep them out. This guy knows from bugs. <3 MadFriarAvelyn posted:All of this talk about pests in rice got me to panic and throw the bag of golden sella I bought in some glass jars and chuck em in the freezer. Here's the funny thing. Golden sella (parboiled rice that's yellow in colour) will tend to not get as much infestation as raw white rice. Apparently the bugs don't like the taste quite as much! You CAN get bugs in there, but in the years I've worked in this business, I have yet to get reports of golden sella getting infestation. Throw it in the freezer for 3 days to get rid of any hitchhiker bugs that got in there, and then transfer to an airtight container. No need to leave it in the freezer! And yes, you can indeed wash and cook rice from the freezer. There's such a small amount of moisture in there that it's not gonna affect the end product if it's kept frozen. Also, I hope you're soaking your sella rice? It needs like an hour to soak for it to come out the best. uber_stoat posted:my understanding is you don't have to leave it in the freezer. you cool it down for a while to kill any live ones and any eggs that might be inside, then you put it into a container outside the freezer. then it will be happy sitting on your pantry shelf with only the ghosts of weevils to haunt you. Yes, all of this. buglord posted:Buddy I don’t know what compels you to write thousands of words about rice on your off time but I’m so glad you do. You know when you have a thing that you love very much? And you want to share it with others? And most of the population doesn't actually care about your passions, and generally tells you to shut up and take a seat? When you find people who are interested in that thing that you love, you want to make them excited about it too. You want to show them what makes that thing so fascinating. What makes it so much fun to talk about. What spawned this thread was that I kept getting oddly specific questions about rice and its production. I was visiting Wroughtirony's and her parents at their house in Maine. We were doing early Xmas. During our hangout, Wroughtirony was like, "Dino, people keep asking about rice on the discord and the Goons with Spoons forum. Goddamned make a thread about rice. I promise you people will want to know about it." So then I did when I got home and had some spare time. I genuinely love rice, and will talk about it all the time to anyone who will listen. I also love shipping logistics. I find it fascinating. Combine the two, and I've got my absolute dream job!
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Jan 19, 2024 13:51
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Doom Rooster posted:I went out and got some Ponni to make pongal after your post about it. It was delicious, and we’ll probably be making it every month for the foreseeable future. Ok don’t laugh, but it hella works for stir fry if you use the the “proper” ratio of water to rice. So in the rice cooker, it’s however many rice cooker cups, and then fill to the exact fill line for those cups of rice. Ponni is made to absorb way way more water than most, which is why so many people love it. It’s economical to have a rice that you can cook with 3 parts water to 1 part rice and it still comes out fine.
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Jan 19, 2024 18:12
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Stoca Zola posted:Thanks to this thread I remembered the sack of rice that my partner’s lovely Sikh coworker gave him when they were leaving town and didn’t want to have to lug with them. I think it’s in the top of my pantry still in the sack, I want to get it down and see what kind it is and if it is still ok. We are in a dry climate but I have no idea how old this rice is or the status of any possible pests. Is there a point where you should just give up on poorly cared for rice? 35 years if it's white rice. White rice has a freakishly long shelf life. Hyperlynx posted:edit edit: also, I'm in Australia, which I'm under the impression has pretty strict quarantine procedures for imports. (Well, or maybe that's just Western Australia). Has that been the case in your experience? (Well, assuming you send rice here). http://www.sukhahousethailand.com/thai-hom-mali-rice-certificate/ Thai export standard is a minimum of 95% purity, but the vast majority of the stuff exported as Thai Hom Mali is like 97% or above. Here's the full list of Thai export standards for Hom Mali: https://www.acfs.go.th/standard/download/eng/Thai_Hom_Mali.pdf We only import rice to the USA, so I'm not familiar with import standards for Aus. I believe y'all have insane import rules, because of the masses of invasive species that can wiggle their way through your borders and wreak havoc on your local flora/fauna. However, check and see if there's a website where you can find a government agency that names and shames fuckups. In the USA, it's the FDA realist. Here's one such example, talking about how tamarind imports are automatically detained without physical exam (i.e., the FDA demands to examine every single import of tamarind, and take samples, send to lab, and then and only then release it for selling) due to rodent, insect, or OTHER ANIMAL poops. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/CMS_IA/importalert_1175.html Casually searching the FDA Red List for imports that you consume will be a very important learning experience. Discendo Vox posted:I appreciate your well-informed posts on FDA and NOP regulatory; as you indicate, rice has fewer issues than a lot of other commodities, and yeah, organic's an incredible shitpile of bad underlying science. Organic and non-GMO is a butt-ton of bad science, and fearmongering, to be honest. I don't care for either. PurpleXVI posted:I consider the health reasons to wash rice somewhat eye-rolly, worries about heavy metals and such, at least in a place where food safety is as strictly regulated as in the EU in general(and Denmark in particular), but I do find that a quick wash(literally just put it in sieve and give it a quick splash under the faucet for ten seconds) tends to give the rice a nicer texture. Looks like what we get at our local store is a mixture of Indian and Pakistani imports repackaged(cleaned?) in Poland. No matter how strict you think the regulations are in your country, wash your goddamned rice anyways. I can't speak for Pakistan's export standards, but I know that Indian export standards for Basmati are fairy strict, because Basmati is a protected term, and the Indian government takes that particular export very seriously. Export standard is 92% or higher purity, but most Basmati is like 97% or higher when exported to the USA. PokeJoe posted:I always wash my rice. Why? Because I'm on a strictly clean diet Why are you like this. :| Coasterphreak posted:Uncle Roger say you need better rice joke pyknosis posted:do you still need to wash your rice if you're gonna eat it raw DO NOT EAT THE RICE WITHOUT COKING IT FOR gently caress'S SAKE. Squashy Nipples posted:I'm an rear end in a top hat, and I lost the magic measuring cup for my 2 quart Aroma rice cooker. https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-Transparent-Measuring-Cooker-Tools/dp/B09ZBCXM5B But also, it's 3/4 of a cup. bloody ghost titty posted:I went and got five# calrose for my daily and sone sooni for my south Asian dishes, thanks Dino for sharing a bunch of stuff I couldn’t parse out from various blogs! mobby_6kl posted:That's an awesome thread and I'm sad I only noticed it it today for the first time. I usually use jasmine rice for everyday cooking as there's a big market nearby and I can get huge sacks at good prices directly from the Vietnamese sellers which is pretty nice. VictualSquid posted:Parboiled rice works very well for pilavs it is what I use most of the time. Or Turkish rice, if I get some on sale. Also if you feel fancy do that trick where you replace around 1/10th of the rice with orzo pasta for contrast. Yup! Due to the amount of stirring and such needed for rice, definitely use parboiled. Also, Orzo is a hate crime. gently caress that garbage pasta. Planet X posted:I too want to chime in and say that I've found this thread incredibly informative and thanks OP for all of the info. I have had Jasmine as my standard rice for a while, with Basmati for Indian adjacent dishes. If you have sticky rice, soak it overnight, and then cook it like normal white rice in the rice cooker. It will come out lovely.
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Jan 21, 2024 16:41
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Holy cats this thing blew up in my absence! Thirteen Orphans posted:I use a rice cooker and do the “first joint first finger” method of making sure I put the right amount of water in (I usually eat sushi rice). I have to switch to brown rice; is there a different technique for how much water I’ll need? In my opinion, the best way to make brown rice is to soak it in cold water overnight, then add the same exact amount of water as you would for white rice, and throw it in the rice cooker. It'll cook in the same time as white rice. IF YOU DON'T soak, then use 3 of the rice cooker cups, and fill the water to the 4 cup line, and you should be good to go. VictualSquid posted:The thing to understand about pilavs is that it is impossible to make it inauthentic. You can walk from Spain to Japan and have a different locally authentic pilav-style dish every day. Each is also inauthentic to the village you were in yesterday. And then do the same again including Africa or the Americas. therattle posted:I can’t give an exact amount but it needs more. Maybe 20%? I usually just eyeball it and it’s ok. Brown rice, to me at least, can take a lot of cooking and water, and I think is often served undercooked in a lot of places, which is, I think, why a lot of people don’t like it. It’s not cooked with enough water and it’s too tough. It can bear being cooked with too much water more than too little.  But yeah, it's like an extra 20% or so if you're cooking brown rice direct from the bag. Else, if you soak it (as mentioned above) use the same amount of water as for white. Also, the texture is improved EXPONENTIALLY with an overnight soak. Stoca Zola posted:Rice update: the rice was open but a clip was sealing the bag. It’s Daawat Biryani basmati rice, looks yellow and smells nutty. Very long grains, couldn’t see any pests or broken grains. Lots of opaque white grains though, maybe 20%? mobby_6kl posted:Thanks! I'll have to see what exactly "white sella" is and how it maps to what's being sold here (not the US) but seems like parboiled basmati would be better than regular one I've used, at least. 1121 is the type preferred by Middle Eastern people, because not only is it super dry (and pilafs need a drier rice), it's also FREAKISHLY long. When cooked, you can get a good 21 mm out of that fucker. The milled white 1121 Basmati is 8 mm, which is a deadass 1 mm improvement over other varieties. And, because Middle Eastern food tends to be rougher on the grains, the parboiled (which produces much stronger grains) is always preferred. The "cheap" Basmati is called Pusa Basmati, is the stuff that you see in most brands as just Basmati Rice. If you want the more premium stuff, look for bags that say "Traditional" or "1121" Basmati. Traditional Basmati is the One True Basmati Omg, and cooks up fluffy and long and beautiful. 1121, as previously mentioned, is a crazy long grain, but isn't as fragrant as Traditional. Pusa is fine, I guess if you're not picky about flavour or aroma. OR FREEDOM. WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM. But yeah. Be on the lookout at the Middle Eastern or Indian markets for the bags that say "Sella". If it specifies "Golden Sella", you're looking at the stuff that's been parboiled to hell and back. Avoid avoid avoid. That stuff is foul. If it says "creamy sella" or "White sella" or just plain "Sella", you're in good shape. Also, here is an article about 1121 versus Traditional Basmati: https://thericejournal.springeropen...0Basmati%20370. It's a real knee slapper. for fucks sake posted:Yeah I think it needs more water due to longer cooking time meaning more evaporation. I do most of my rice cooking in a pressure cooker these days, and because there's no evaporation the ratio of rice to water is pretty much always 1:1 regardless of the type of rice. E-flat posted:Reading the stuff about pests and pest control was really eye opening. I used to work for a food pantry as a warehouse manager, and more than once (though very rarely!) we’d find bugs in our bags of rice. I can’t recall the brand(s) other than we usually got our rice in one pound bags that had a red label, but mahatma and goya are familiar names. TheParadigm posted:I wanted to ask about this because i saw that it didn't get much attention and was just reading the thread PokeJoe posted:I remember white rice being seen as bad and brown rice being pushed for a few years but everyone immediately realized brown rice tastes like cardboard and takes too long to cook therattle posted:Properly cooked brown rice is actually pretty good in certain uses. Short grain brown is quite delicious; it’s a good GF sub for barley. I use it with Japanese soups, for example, where it works really well. Switchback posted:Unless those friends are Malaysian (or Singaporean) Chinese, they can shove it. Uncle Roger is a national hero Switchback posted:Seriously though this is a great thread. Thank you for making it. After many years of loving up rice, I finally figured out how to make jasmine rice and it comes out perfect every time. Maybe I can branch out now that I’ve read this thread (no I will not.) If you've mastered Jasmine, I think you're ready to try Basmati. I believe in you! Switchback posted:How bad is this rice? It looks like every grain is broken and 30% are chalky. This is jasmine rice purchased in Australia, so we ain’t getting any higher quality product down here even if maybe it doesn’t have bugs.. PokeJoe posted:it still takes too long therattle posted:Just change your timings! If I’m making brown rice it just becomes the first thing I do. VictualSquid posted:I remember one of the GWS questions threads had someone who was afraid that white rice will kill him with diabetes if he ate it every day. He was asking for ideas because he moved to some pacific island where everybody eats white rice every day and other starches were comically expensive. therattle posted:The secret to fried rice is to use rice that has been cooked and cooled, ideally the day before. DekeThornton posted:Being afraid of white rice has been a thing in low carb circles for a good while, just like they are afraid of pasta and white bread. It's not really anything special about rice in that regard. It's just another type of bad carb to them. PurpleXVI posted:If you eat only white rice, and practically nothing else, then yes, you can suffer certain vitamin deficiencies(thiamine deficiency aka "beriberi" is the classic), but like... if you eat something with the white rice, like just about any kind of sauce, some meat, maybe a vegetable, then no, there's no inherent risk to eating white rice instead of other starches. It's not something you're likely to encounter unless you have a very bizarre diet, or are in a refugee camp or war zone where eating an even slightly varied diet is a challenge. Everett False posted:When my spouse was diagnosed as diabetic, they were told by their doctor that they should avoid all rice and if they had to eat rice it should only ever be brown rice. therattle posted:My son is diabetic and white rice is definitely the lot worse than brown from a GI perspective. mystes posted:Obviously if you're diabetic and are using a glucose meter or something you should probably just go by the actual results of that and if your glucose spikes more after white rice then it makes sense to eat brown rice or less rice instead. uber_stoat posted:outside of those who have to manage blood sugar it's entirely a low carb/keto thing. carbs are the devil. Bread Enthusiast posted:A few days behind but yeah, more water. We eat a shitload of rice (what can I say, I like carbs). So much rice that I one day just gave up and weighed the 6-serving-cups of white rice (turns out to be almost exactly 32 oz) so I just do that by weight now. Anne Whateley posted:You aren’t eating brown rice on keto, and it doesn’t have significantly fewer carbs than white rice. Bread Enthusiast posted:wat.... I could have been doing that all this time instead of using the whole sink.... dangit! I will try that next time - thanks, mysterious stranger! His Divine Shadow posted:I eat rice and I have diabetes, it does like to make the blood sugar spike so I gotta compensate by taking extra insulin. Making the food contain more fat also helps. Fat slows the release of sugars. Squashy Nipples posted:I had jaw surgery last week, and I was specifically told "no rice until all the stitches dissolve". Jyrraeth posted:I made that mistake as a teenager, a surprising amount of rice can get stuck. I managed to get it all out but lesson learned, surgeon was happy I got it all out but he did give a more thorough look than otherwise. VictualSquid posted:Yeah. I forgot that once. Then the dentist pulled out a bloody grain rice from the wound and showed it to me, put me off eating rice for another week. That was before fully dissolving stitches became popular, though. GordonComstock posted:I'm a big believer in the pasta method cooking for rice, including brown rice. Love white but if I want to be healthier, I'll do 30 minutes in boiling water, drain for a little, then put back in the pan off the heat, covered and let it steam for 5-10 minutes. Best I can do to get the texture palatable. PokeJoe posted:I simply use a rice cooker OP Hyperlynx posted:I have to say, since using the water marker on the rice cooker bowl my rice has been waaaay nicer. The first time I filled to just below the marker and it was a little underdone, now I'm filling to the top of the marker and it's coming out perfect.
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Jan 27, 2024 20:06
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Planet X posted:I am low on basmati, and conveniently I was trying out a new kebab shop, which turned out to be amazing. Ocean Pearl I've never heard of, but it looks like they're from Pakistan. I can't speak to how Pakistani rice is, because I've not eaten the stuff. The Pakistani folk I knew back in South Florida were buying the Indian Basmati. All the other brands you mentioned are indeed popular, because they're budget brands. Shopkeeper is thinking that you don't know what the good stuff is anyway, or that you'll balk at paying for the good stuff, so he sent you to the basic stuff. IDK why he let you walk out of there with freaking golden sella. That's a choice. IDK, Golden Sella in my opinion cooks up lovely and long and separate as heck. The rice grains will never stick together. However, they are also a lot bouncier than your raw rice or steam rice. You have to be hella into that sort of thing to get it. However, the good thing is that the golden sella will be the strongest rice you've ever used. A lot of the Persian, Arab, African, Afghani, Pakistani, Bengali, or Caribbean recipes that call for long grain rice will come out perfectly. The grains will be long and perfect in shape, and they won't fall apart when you mix them with the various ingredients that those recipes call for. Whether it's Jollof Rice, or Tahdig, you're always going to have perfect grains. The downside is that it'll be fragrant, but not nearly as fragrant as the aged raw rice, and the grains will be a lot tougher than the softness you'd get from raw rice. It's a recipe versus texture thing. If you're looking for the more premium stuff, veer on over to like Dunar Elonga (NOT the sella stuff in the jute bag, the white rice in the plastic bag). mobby_6kl posted:Ooof so there are different grades of Basmati rice like stainless steel alloys? Jeez now I have one more topic to get obsessed over, thanks!
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Feb 1, 2024 02:37
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Ocean Pearl is Golden Sella. I bought a 10 lb bag (was really the only denomination they had), so its going to take me a while to get through it, but I wouldn't mind knowing what you feel is foul about it. 
maybe using the scales would be even more consistent but this seems to be good enough.
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Longest rice is indeed the 1121 Basmati I had mentioned. The shortest would be some type of Japanese short grain. Those grains are so stinking cute. They look like fat little balls of rice.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:54
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Switchback posted:Dino what are your opinions about those pouches of rice you microwave for 90 seconds? It’s complicated. I understand that I’m able bodied, and have access to a rice cooker, the money to be able to buy 20 lb bags of rice, and the ability to bring said 20 lb bags of rice home, the storage containers to keep the rice free of bugs for the three or so months it takes me to go through that rice, and the space to store it. When I was young, I had parents with the time to teach me how to cook, and I had access to enough rice, and the guidance of a parent to be able to cook several pots of rice in the rice cooker, so that I became good at it, and can do so with confidence. I also get that the RTE (ready to eat) rice is a seriously huge game changer when making dishes that require the grains to be separate. (RTE rice is what we call the microwave pouches.) The process to get those grains into the pouch makes it so that the rice grains are not sticky at all. You can open the pouch, break up the rice with your fingers, and immediately start making a stir fried rice, or another such similar thing. It’s a convenient thing to have when you’re at a hotel or something, or a school dorm, or any other situation where you want rice, but don’t have the space or facilities to make rice happen. That said. They taste FINE, but are trash when compared to the real thing. Also, Minute Rice is not the same thing. Minute Rice is actively loving gross. Do not buy that trash.
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Feb 6, 2024 13:19
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distortion park posted:Does anyone know how they process this sort of rice in the UK? They import the brown rice, and polish it down to white rice in the UK. It's sure as hell not grown in the UK. And no, it's not pre-washed. Like I said before, not washing rice won't harm you. And, the moisture content in Basmati is low enough that even if you do just throw it straight into the cooking pot, it'll come out fine. However, having known what rice has to go through before reaching your table, I do wash my rice every time, because it's just gross to be eating the dust and such that tags along on the grains. Yes, if you're buying Hom Mali rice then the Thai government has Very Strong Opinions, and enforces them with export standards as outlined here: https://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/tha166269.pdf If it's labelled Hom Mali it's at least 92% pure.
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Feb 8, 2024 00:54
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Decoy Badger posted:What does purity of rice mean? If my Thai hom mali is 97% pure what's the other 240g floating around in the sack composed of? So I checked a certificate of analysis from a random shipment of Thai Hom Mali rice. Purity was 96% and some change. Red or undermilled kernels were 0.1%. Yellow kernels were 0.13%. Chalky grains were 0.5%. Damaged grains were 0.14%. White glutinous rice was 0.15%. Broken grains were 2.6%. Add it all up, and it comes to another 3.62%. You don't get exactly 100% when all are combined, but it's pretty damned close (99.62%), and can be explained by rounding off issues. The sampling is done in 1 KG samples taken from each of the bags, and an average is calculated overall. Hopefully, this gives you a snapshot of what a bag of good quality rice should look like. Per 100 grains of rice, no more than 4 of them should have issues in a decent bag of Hom Mali rice. @Rattle - Even the most careful millers can end up with paddy grains, rocks, dirt, or other foreign material in the rice. It's all down to how strict your spec sheet is. A lot of times, the more expensive rice that you see in the markets have a much smaller tolerance for issues with the grain, because the market it's being sold to is more sensitive than the typical people who buy it. For example, if you're a customer who runs the product through your own cleaning machines, and just need us to get the product from overseas to here, you'll have MUCH higher tolerance for foreign material in the sacks than someone who's opening up the sacks and using them immediately to cook. Make this triply so if the customer is literally sorting the rice by hand, because they don't have machines to test for foreign material. In those cases, the tolerances are almost zero. In a 44,000 lb load of rice, if there's more than like 5 or 10 rocks, they'll reject the load as not cleaned well enough. Whereas for the customers with their own cleaning material, they don't care to pay the extremely expensive markup to have rice that's been cleaned to that level, because they're gonna do it anyways, and they can do it cheaper than we can, because they're using their own in-house staff. The issue with cleaning to that level of zero foreign material is false positives. Yes, the color sorting machine will kick off grains with weird colors on them, but will also let through a couple of ones that are juuuust on the border of OK. If you jack up the strength of the rejections, you'll risk losing good viable product to the reject pile. Once it's in the reject pile, it's not worth sending through the machine again to pick out the good grains from the dirt, debris, and rocks, so it all gets discarded. This means that the markup is significantly higher for those who need that level of clean. For the typical customer, a couple of things in the bag of rice isn't going to bother them, as they're going to wash the rice. Or, if they're not going to wash the rice, they're not that freaked out by dirt anyways.
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Feb 12, 2024 18:23
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PurpleXVI posted:https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68293149 As a former Hindu, and a vegan, ew. Srsly. Ew.
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Feb 17, 2024 02:03
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Cached Money posted:What is your opinion of Maharani brand 1121 Basmati rice, OP? I’ve never bought it. Is it the stuff made by Chaman Lal Setia or something? https://www.maharanirice.co.in/ I’ve had their unbranded rice before, and didn’t have quality issues; I never tried their branded stuff. That’s all I’ll say about that company.
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Mar 1, 2024 08:22
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Everett False posted:We bought some short grain brown rice and tried soaking it before cooking based on the advice of this thread. Absolute game changer. The difference between this and unsoaked long grain brown rice is like night and day. My life is now better for having clicked on a forum thread about rice. Even the texture is better, right? It’s like softer but still the rice stays separate. It’s one of my favourite ways to make brown rice more palatable. The other thing is that I use it in dishes where its unique texture works as an asset and not as a liability. One of those places is when you have those recipes for veggie burgers. White rice disappears. Brown rice adds its own unique texture, and is very nice in there. (I generally don’t care for veggie burgers that taste like meat. I want them to be bang full of beans and other tasty things, and taste like their own cool little thing.) Another place is when you have a dish with hearty beans in, like kidney beans or black beans. The split hulled pulses like red lentils or moong daal I will want white rice. But like a raajma or a black bean soup or something, give me the brown rice to stand up to those hearty beans. Ditto that for a chili that has TVP. The bouncy texture of the veggie meat is really nice with the texture of brown rice. It can stand up to those big bold textures. For the wimpy little daals and curries where everything is soft, I want the rice to kind of disappear, and to be able to eat large amounts without stopping. For the stuff that I’m hitting up to be hearty and filling, reach for the brown rice. Re: ghost It’s been that long!? Wtf. https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=139 Also here’s the YouTube channel where I made a couple of videos to entertain my nephew during the pandemic: https://m.youtube.com/c/dinosarma He likes cooking and he likes me explaining things.
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Mar 1, 2024 08:35
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Cached Money posted:No idea but it's good poo poo imo, long rear end grains and like zero defects. 1121 is the longest grains in the world, and is the sort that's bought by those people for whom the length is the most important. They're going to be super vigorous about removing brokens and damaged/discoloured and other such issues. It's their premium product, and fetches a pretty hefty price in the market. I've never had an issue with the quality control of the company who produces that stuff.
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Mar 2, 2024 01:40
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bob dobbs is dead posted:you gotta tell us which are the poo poo brands of rice, then There are so many brands out there, with so many varying degrees of quality that it's nigh impossible to have eaten them all. In general I'll avoid any rice that comes in a bag where I can't look at the physical rice, and assess the quality of it. Not because the stuff in jute bags or cloth bags or non woven bags is bad quality, but mainly because if I can't look at the rice and know what I'm getting, I end up being disappointed when I get it home. OK, so here's what I'm looking for: - Long, slender grains, about 7.3 mm or longer. - No visible broken grains - Grains are all of a uniform colour - Colour is off-white to light beige. Bright white Basmati has not been aged for very long, and I want the aged stuff. - No yellow, red, black, or streaky grains. - No paddy/unhulled grains - No visible chalky grains. - The word "Traditional" Basmati listed on the label. 1121 is fine. It's not that it's bad. However, the taste of 1121 isn't as good, because it's got a really short crop cycle. I personally prefer the aroma and taste of Traditional Basmati rice. It's a much longer growing cycle, and is much more of a pain in the butt to produce. However, that extra effort shows up in the taste of the final product.
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Mar 3, 2024 16:40
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 11:08 |
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bob dobbs is dead posted:so you basically don't eat east-asian-style short-grain? Of course I do! That was the stuff I look for in Basmati in particular.
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Mar 3, 2024 16:53
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