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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2009 4:51:59 GMT
Shouldn't this be in The Galley? If you take it there, I will tell you my method, which is perfect. I didn't think that cooking rice qualified as a recipe.
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2009 4:54:50 GMT
I just make steamed rice these days. I rinse it in the pan several times until the water is clearer, cover the rice with water about 1cm over the grains and put it on the stove on high.
The moment the water boils, I turn off the (electric) stove and cover the pot. 10 minutes later I have perfect, firm steamed rice.
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Post by hwinpp on May 20, 2009 5:09:02 GMT
Will give my thoughts tomorrow. Am experiencing an interesting Khmer ceremony and have taken leave these two afternoons, keep it warm is all I can say now! ;D ;D ;D
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Post by Deleted on May 20, 2009 5:26:16 GMT
(My original post was not meant to be about rice dishes, just the basic cooking of ordinary rice, the same way people ask how to make soft boiled eggs. Recipes for rice dishes certainly belong in the galley.)
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Post by bixaorellana on May 20, 2009 5:27:16 GMT
This is how it starts. Some tiny holes. A few scritching noises in the walls. The next thing you know, the whole edifice is down around your ears.
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Post by tillystar on May 20, 2009 8:12:11 GMT
For basmati - measure rice with a cup and add twice as much water (I have a particular coffee cup that is perfect for two people). Bring to the boil, put lid on a turn heat right down for 5 minutes, turn off and leave for another 10 minutes.
Similiar to K really except we have a gas cooker so the 5 mins is needed as turning off gives no heat at all.
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Post by spindrift on May 20, 2009 9:33:43 GMT
PERFECT BASMATI RICE
(Measure rice with teacup and add twice as much water). I'll be using two cups of rice and two cups of water here.
METHOD
Put 2 cups of rice in a bowl. Pour over enough Boiling Water to cover. Stir well. (Dirt and starch come out)....rinse well under cold running water.
In a cast iron (or similar saucepan) bring two cups of cold water to the boil. Add a minuscule amount of salt (optional). As soon as the water boils throw in the rice and let it boil for exactly 2 minutes.
Now, put a lid on the saucepan and turn the heat down to absolute minimum and leave on this lowered heat for exactly 20 minutes. DO NOT LIFT THE LID DURING THIS TIME.
On completion of the 20 minutes, take lid off, add as large knobs of butter (optional), put lid back on and leave for 10 minutes to absorb.
Now stir rice with fork and it will be perfect with separate grains.....
This is an Iranian way of making rice.
NB. You can't cook rice this way if you use a thin-bottom saucepan. It needs prolonged minimum heat...I do put a trivet under the heavy saucepan to prevent burning.
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Post by Jazz on May 20, 2009 13:28:27 GMT
Perfect Basmati Rice
I cook mine exactly as you do Spindrift, but seldom use butter in the final stage, which is only 5 minutes for me. This method often goes wrong when people lift the lid during the 20 minutes. NO PEEKING! I love the delicate fragrance of basmati rice.
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Post by spindrift on May 20, 2009 14:22:10 GMT
I don't use butter as a rule, Jazz....
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Post by bazfaz on May 20, 2009 16:24:57 GMT
Perfect basmati rice.
Buy Tilda brand. You can get it all over the UK. Kerouac can buy it in Paris. I don't know about elsewhere.
Do not bother to rinse it. Do not measure cups of rice and water.
Put the rice in a pot of boiling salted water (I have abandoned throwing rice in a pan as inevitably some goes on the floor). Cook the Tilda basmati rice in the boiling water for ten minutes.
Strain.
That is all.
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Post by hwinpp on May 21, 2009 5:01:30 GMT
I do it exactly as K2 does it if I cook it in a pot. Except I use my index finger for measuring.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2009 5:11:54 GMT
Okay, what do you eat rice with? Everything? Just certain dishes? All by itself as a dish with a few extra ingredients? Pure?
I am not a big rice eater, but I find it just about impossible to imagine eating a curry without rice. With other Asian food, I don't mind substituting noodles for the rice sometimes -- I prefer pasta to rice anyway.
I never eat rice all by itself -- the closest I would get to that would be a poorly garnished biryani.
As a child, I would perplexedly watch my brother devouring rice with butter on it. Not for me.
And I have already mentioned here that I have never eaten risotto in my life. I have led a sheltered life.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 21, 2009 6:13:43 GMT
There is something wrong with people who don't like rice. I can eat steamed white rice straight out of the pot.
I usually make an abbreviated version of the ubiquitous Mexican rice, using water instead of chicken broth & lightly seasoning it with a cut up carrot or a couple sprigs of parsely.
Plain chicken soup needs rice underneath it. Really almost any stewed, "wet" food is enhanced by rice. Beans pretty much must have rice with them.
I like to use leftover cooked rice in a salad -- like pasta salad, but an olive-oil based dressing instead of mayonnaise.
Brown rice is better if made a little pilaf-y. Saute onions & maybe some peppers, toss in some seeds -- mustard or sesame, perhaps, put the dry raw rice in and stir & cook until golden, the add boiling water, cover & cook until done.
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Post by hwinpp on May 21, 2009 6:28:56 GMT
I eat rice with nearly everything but like substituting it with pasta or potatoes on occasion. I suppose you could eat rice with goulash but I haven''t tried that.
I like an Iranian dish called chelo kebab. Basically it's a skewer of meat very similar to kofte on a huge plate of long grained rice. You get a big dollop of butter on the rice and a raw egg and raw onion rings that you're supposed to mix with the rice.
I'm not a big fan of very soupy rice soups though I like eating rice porridge.
I discovered risotto just before leaving Germany and loved it. I wouldn't have the patience to make it myself though.
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Post by tillystar on May 21, 2009 8:00:20 GMT
I love the stuff. I love plain white basmati, I could eat it all day long. If I am cooking for just me I just have it plain with peas and a bit of garlic for supper. Another solitary supper I love is brown rice with soy sauce and seeds and nuts. Oh and spicy rice with bits in - whatever is left in the fridge really.
I make a lot of paella and risotto too. I make a risotto with roasted tomato sauce instead of stock that is addictive, I could eat plates and plates of the stuff.
And of course, there is always rice pudding.
Oh god and rice and clams is surely a food from the Gods.
When Mr Star is wantign comfort food he has plain spanish rice with a raw egg mixed in. I cannot watch this.
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Post by spindrift on May 21, 2009 8:36:24 GMT
Baz - you and I have had this rice discussion before! You're wrong! Mine is better. ;D
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Post by spindrift on May 21, 2009 8:40:56 GMT
There is absolutely nothing wrong with my tastes ! but I do prefer wheat to rice and potatoes above all.
I've had too much rice in Asia and have become rather fed up with it. I think the cold congealed sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves (in Laos, several times a day) finally did for me.
It's the same old divide in Japan. I remember chatting with a young Japanese. He was about to get married to a girl who preferred wheat to rice....there would be a conflict about whether to serve rice or wheat noodles...something like that.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 21, 2009 14:43:08 GMT
Shouldn't this be in The Galley? If you take it there, I will tell you my method, which is perfect. I didn't think that cooking rice qualified as a recipe. Recipes are methods for cooking. We're talking here about methods for cooking rice. If I were to remember later that there was a discussion about cooking rice, I'd naturally go looking for it in The Galley.
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Post by Jazz on May 21, 2009 14:55:05 GMT
Baz - you and I have had this rice discussion before! You're wrong! Mine is better. ;D I agree! heheh Will this thread become as fraught with controversy as Gyro's 'do you leave the lid on while boiling your pasta'? (Kimby-irony warning!!!)
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Post by Kimby on May 21, 2009 19:04:47 GMT
Thanks most kindly, Jazz for the irony-warning. Emoticons work too, but they rile up some folks.
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Post by hwinpp on May 22, 2009 4:48:12 GMT
I do feel I could do with less rice and more pasta and potatoes. It's just that my girlfriend cooks the meals during the week and she claims she doesn't know how to prepare them. And I can't be bothered doing them when I come home in the evenings.
I also love Indian breads and whenever I'm in Siem Reap I visit a friend of mine who has an Indian restaurant specialising in south Indian food. I just can't get enough of his breads! Thosai, idli, roti channai. Great stuff!
Agree with you, SD. Sticky rice in Laos is a bit much.
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Post by auntieannie on May 22, 2009 19:15:57 GMT
I do love rice, but remember once in Southern India, after months of rice day in, day out... saying at the counter: do you have anything WITHOUT rice? I just can't stand it anymore. just for one day. NO rice please... what did I get? ... rice. I nearly had a nervous breakdown.
but generally I could eat rice almost every day. plain basmati, or risotto or and anything in between. A fabulous souvenir is mom's meat-stuffed marrow/courgette/bellpepper when she had added the rice into the dish, for it to cook between the stuffed vegetables, in a gorgeous stock. ooooh! I want some now!
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2009 20:22:20 GMT
Probably it is the fact that I rarely eat rice at home that allows me to brilliantly tolerate excessive rice when I am in Asia.
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Post by rikita on Jun 6, 2009 21:28:12 GMT
i just pour some water in a pot, throw some rice in it, some salt, boil the water, turn down the flame, and check the rice every now and then and if the water is gone before the rice is done add a bit more water. too lazy to invent or follow any complicated methods.
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Post by rikita on Jun 6, 2009 21:30:44 GMT
would take too long to name each dish, but i basically follow what i grew up with: whatever my mom served rice with, that is obviously something rice is best for. what she served potatoes with, that is a potato dish. what she served with pasta, that is something that can only be eaten with pasta. then sometimes i get adventurous though and make a dish with the wrong side dish - and feel really rebellious while i eat it.
in peru, a lot of people i knew eat soup that mainly consisted of potatos, rice and pasta.
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Post by bjd on Jun 7, 2009 8:41:20 GMT
In Ecuador, cheap meals in local restaurants usually seemed to be a piece of chicken, rice and some potato.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 7, 2009 10:02:00 GMT
In Pakistan also, it is common to mix rice and potatoes in the same dish.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 7, 2009 14:56:25 GMT
Up until the early '70s when much of the French Market was turned into loathsome t-shirt and souvenir shops, there was a great workingman's restaurant there that served a monster portion of beef stew consisting of just beef and potatoes over a mountain of rice. I remember being disconcerted by so much of those two "starches" together. Then, in Madhur Jaffrey's Invitation to Indian Cooking I found an interesting recipe of cubed potatoes cooked with rice. She address the two-starch question head on by pointing out that one would take a serving of potatoes or one would take a serving of rice, then asking what's the difference in taking a serving of the two of them together. Incidentally, I've lost my copy of that book. If anyone has this recipe, I'd be grateful if you'd post it.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2010 11:28:12 GMT
Anything new in the world of rice? I'm getting kind of bored with steamed rice, so I think I'm going to make some kind of fried rice soon. Hard to decide on the other ingredients, though.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 23, 2010 14:55:47 GMT
Well, you have to start with steamed rice anyway and let it cool... Except for one friend of mine who is NOT a cook. He actually "fried rice" without cooking it beforehand. No, we didn't eat it.
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