Strategies for effectively and rapidly cleaning rice of starch

[Idaho]

It's full of arsenic as well.

Er...?

 

[maomao]

Er...?

DM link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...-Britain-contains-cancer-causing-arsenic.html

 

[gentlegreen]

I settle for Tilda microwave wholegrain these days. It was quite a shock a while back to see my local supermarkets no longer stock uncooked wholegrain rice.

If I ever cook rice myself it's full-on wholegrain.
I bring it up to the boil in a pressure cooker, then rinse it - it's quite grubby - then I add more water and a chuck in some oil, bring it up to pressure then turn off the heat.
I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to cooking.

 

[Citizen66]

I've coated the rice with egg before frying when I was a teenager. Is it some sort of joke for novices or something? I ended up with clumpy slimy mess.

 

[Citizen66]

Anyway, it's sounding like the problem is that I'm not washing it with hot enough water, and/or not cooking it properly (which kinda sounds hard to do when just simmering water!)

 

[ViolentPanda]

I boiled it prior to frying it... is that where I'm going wrong then?

We get through a fair amount of basmati here, and my usual procedure is to boil the rice, fill the kettle with water and boil, when the rice is cooked, I fill the pan with the rice in 2/3 full of the freshly-boiled water, stir for 30 seconds to loosen the starch from the grains, refill and put the kettle back on, drain the saucepan with the rice in, add the new freshly-boiled water and repeat. Adds five minutes at the end of the cooking time (if you're using a modern electric kettle), and gets rid of about 90% of the starch.
I also let my rice cool before frying, then fluff it with a fork (which breaks the residual weak starch bond between the grains), which seems to help prevent the rice clumping when you fry it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

That was on telly, too, today. Some chef said it. It was the Hairy Bikers...

The G-ddess of Indian cuisine, the Blessed St. Madhur Jaffrey, has been saying it since the '70s.

 

[ViolentPanda]

No!

Rinsing cooked rice is grim... Makes it wet, not fluffy and light. Gonna take some pics next time I do a rice dish. Possibly NYE.

It's not grim if you drain the rice in the pan, then place a folded tea-towel over the pan and wedge the lid on. Leave it for 10 minutes, and the tea towel absorbs most of the extraneous moisture. All you then need do is fluff the rice with a fork.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Won't do any harm, but will be stodgy and sloppy.

It isn't for me - it always turns out fine.

 

[Citizen66]

Well the rice I spent half an hour cleaning came out lovely and fluffy. So nice in fact that I didn't bother frying it. But I'm not doing that every time. I'll try the using hot water rather than cold technique next time.

 

[Epona]

I am quite nervous about certain foods and reheating (seriously, if you'd ever been as ill as I was once with food poisoning, you'd be nervous too), but when I want something like egg fried rice in the evening I will cook the rice a few hours in advance and let it cool. I have never rinsed rice more than one or twice.

Also I don't get why you always want rice to be non-sticky, if I am eating something with a pair of chopsticks, I don't want all the starch washed out and every grain to sit alone and separate from its neighbour. Sometimes rice being a bit clumpy and/or sticky is desirable, depending upon how you are using it.

I use the absorption method for cooking rice (so I don't boil it!), and usually it being clumpy is due to too much water or insufficient 'fluffing' time (time after it is taken off the heat and stirred with a fork to separate grains then covered again off the heat for a few minutes).

 

[antimata]

to be honest.
i just stick it into the fridge for up to a couple of days.
then fry it hot hard out.
then bung the whisked eggs in.
bugger the faffing around just do it and do it HOT.

starch is part of rice. why bother if you just wash it away.....

 

[muscovyduck]

When I first started living on my own I decided I wanted fried rice but I didn't realise you had to like do anything before putting the rice on the pan so yeah burnt rice

 

[Epona]

When I first started living on my own I decided I wanted fried rice but I didn't realise you had to like do anything before putting the rice on the pan so yeah burnt rice

That's kind of sweet. I do wonder though, why in the fuck aren't all people taught to cook?

 

[Citizen66]

We had cookery classes at school, HE (home economics). But iirc it was more stuff you could easily fuck up like baking rather then practical stuff like how to boil rice, probably to get people interested. Having said that I didn't take it as an option and I probably mainly messed about rather than listened in the first two years when it was compulsory.

 

[gentlegreen]

I can remember one day while I was still living at home idly looking up "chapati" in my mum's "Good Housekeeping" and making some flatbread.
It was something of a revelation - must have been late 70s - so pre-internet and when the most exotic food we ever had was "mum-curry" once a year made from leftover turkey - and always containing sultanas and apple with bits of core ...

It took me to leave home and a hippy moving into the shared house - in around 1980 - for me to realise the benefits of leaving behind white sliced bread and bargain bacon bits and switching to what very quickly became a vegan diet.

It helped hugely to have moved from suburbia to the heart of Bristol's best shopping area.

 

[andysays]

The G-ddess of Indian cuisine, the Blessed St. Madhur Jaffrey, has been saying it since the '70s.

I've got a copy of her recipe book somewhere, and I'm fairly sure that some of the recipes involved frying uncooked (although pre-soaked and rinsed, obvs...) rice along with onions and/or spices, then adding water and cooking in the "normal" way.

This is broadly similar to how you cook arborio rice for risotto, which I have far more often than basmati TBH.

But in both cases it's crucial to get the proportion of water to rice correct (roughly 2 to 1) and then cook until all the water is absorbed, otherwise you end up with a sticky mess and post-cooking rinsing never seems to work, not for me at least.

 

[quimcunx]

I find the best way is to not be fussy about how your rice is served.

 

[dessiato]

What I do is, for fried rice, stick the rice into a large pan of boiling water. I let it cook then rinse the rice with cold water then fry using a little plain vegetable oil flavoured with sesame oil, onion and garlic.

 

[dessiato]

What I do is, for fried rice, stick the rice into a large pan of boiling water. I let it cook then rinse the rice with cold water then fry using a little plain vegetable oil flavoured with sesame oil, onion and garlic.

 

[Fez909]

It's not grim if you drain the rice in the pan, then place a folded tea-towel over the pan and wedge the lid on. Leave it for 10 minutes, and the tea towel absorbs most of the extraneous moisture. All you then need do is fluff the rice with a fork.

I do this tea towel thing now and it's great. Can't remember the last time I fucked up rice and I hardly do anything special.

Rice in pan, kettle of boiling water in, stir it to break up the lumps, then don't stir any more. Test every now and then until ready and then drain and do the tea-towel thing.