MACHINE: Medium (6-cup) rice cooker ;
fuzzy logic or on/off
CYCLE: Regular/Brown Rice
YIELD: Serves 4 to 6
1 cup Black Japonica rice
2⅓ cups water
1. Place the rice in a fine strainer or bowl, rinse with cold water twice, and drain twice. The water will be dull reddish.
2. Coat the rice cooker bowl with nonstick cooking spray or a film of vegetable oil (this is important with this rice). Place the rice in the rice bowl. Add the water; swirl to combine. Close the cover and set for the regular/Brown Rice cycle.
3. When the machine switches to the Keep Warm cycle, open and dry the inside of the cover. Close the cover and let the rice rest for 30 to 45 minutes. Fluff the rice a few times with a wooden or plastic rice paddle or wooden spoon. This rice will hold on Keep Warm for 1 to 2 hours. Serve hot.
THE BASICS : AMYLOSE AND AMYLOPECTIN
Every time you cook a pot of rice, you are making mental notes about amy-lose and amylopectin, the two components of starch found in rice, even though you probably don’t know it. Long-grain rices like Carolina and basmati, with a dry texture, have a high level of amylose and low levels of amylopectin; amylose is a waxy starch that sets up into a stiff gel in the grain during cooking, so you end up with dry, separate grains. The raw grains of long-grain rices look translucent; a bit of light shines through.
Medium- and short-grain rices have the opposite balance; they are low in amylose and high in amylopectin (think “pectin” like the plant substance that helps fruits jell). Rices low in amylose are sticky and creamy when cooked, like Arborio and Calrose, because the starch does not set up during the cooking; when you look at the raw grains they have a more solid, opaque, pearly essence.
Between the shape and the color, with a little practice, you can identify every rice, even if it’s not in its identifying packaging.
RICE AND OTHER COMMERCIAL GRAIN MIXES IN THE RICE COOKER
The number and variety of commercial rice and grain mixes on the shelf of the average American supermarket is astonishing and, in many cases, so is their high quality. Almost every producer of rice has a line of rice plus flavoring mixtures designed for “extra-quick” meals. You can have a mellow pilaf, a robust brown rice blend, or even a satisfyingly spicy jambalaya on the table in the amount of time it takes to cook plain rice, with no chopping and only minimal cleanup.
We tested a dozen of the more than 100 rice and grain mixes we found at a local market. All cooked up beautifully in the rice cooker, except a risotto mix that spattered all over the counter when made on the regular cycle. If you want to make a risotto mix in the rice cooker, do so only on the Porridge cycle of a fuzzy logic machine.
Here are some of our favorite brands and flavor offerings:
Zatarain’s New Orleans Style Jambalaya Mix, which was spicy and satisfyingly hearty. We followed a suggestion on the package and added a pound of sliced smoky sausage (we used turkey sausage).
Near East Toasted Almond Pilaf Mix, an old favorite that includes orzo pasta, pearled wheat, and almonds along with the rice. This one is buttery and mildly spiced, and it’s a bit chewy because of the wheat.
Casbah Nutted Pilaf Mix, which enriches plain rice with a surprisingly extravagant variety of nuts: cashews, almonds, pine nuts, and pistachios.
The San Francisco Treat, Rice-A-Roni, in Herb and Butter flavor. This mellow rice and pasta mix is flecked with parsley. The package directions call for two extra steps: a short sauté of the rice and pasta before the water is added and stirring in the seasonings at the end. We sautéed right in the rice cooker bowl and stirred in the seasonings before the steaming period.
We liked the bright color, aroma, and flavor of Mahatma Saffron Yellow Seasonings & Long Grain Rice, which is sold in a yellow foil tube. But that bright yellow color left a ring on the bowl of one of our inexpensive cookers. This mix did not stain bowls with nonstick coatings.
Here are some tips for preparing rice and grain mixes in the rice cooker:
When using a medium (6-cup) rice cooker, use the same amount of water called for on the package. In a small rice cooker (2- to 4-cup), start with ¼ cup less liquid; in a large cooker (10-cup), start with ¼ cup more liquid.
Put the water, rice, any butter or oil, and any seasonings from a separate packet into the rice cooker bowl. Program for the regular or Quick Cook cycle, remembering to let the rice steam for 15 minutes on the Keep Warm cycle before fluffing it with a wooden or plastic rice paddle or a wooden spoon. Some mixes (like Rice-A-Roni) call for adding the seasonings at the end of the cooking instead of the beginning; do this by stirring them in when the cooker shuts off or switches to Keep Warm.
If the resulting product is too chewy, add ¼ cup more water next time; if it is too wet for your taste, use ¼ cup less water next time. Keep a record of what works best for your favorite mixes. (If your rice cooker has a Keep Warm cycle, you can fix chewy rice on the spot. Just sprinkle the additional water over the rice, close the cover, and let the rice stay on Keep Warm for about 15 minutes more while the water is absorbed. Fluff the rice, then serve.)
If the mix you have selected has a sautéing step (like Rice-A-Roni), you can do this right in the rice cooker. Program the cooker for the regular or Quick Cook program and add the specified amount of butter or oil. When the butter is melted or the oil is hot, add the rice and sauté as directed on the package. Then add the liquid and allow the cooking cycle to complete as usual.
To cook two rice mixes at the same time, you will not need to quite double the water. Use ¼ cup less water for the second mix.
As noted above, cook risotto mixes on the Porridge cycle only. You may need an additional ¼ cup water to achieve the desired degree of creaminess.
THE LUNDBERG FAMILY RICE FARM
Throughout this book you will see references to Lundberg rices. Lund berg Family Farms is situated in the northern Central Valley of California, smack-dab in the center of rice country in the shadow of Sutter Buttes. California is known for its remarkable rice crop yields, 25 percent higher than in any of the southern states, and Lundberg is the living proof of this; it operates on a relatively small total acreage of rice-growing land and produces a staggering amount of really good, consistently dependable rice. Still family owned and operated, the company sells some of the best tasting, and most diverse, rices in the country.
The company started in the late 1960s by selling 50-pound bags of their Natural Short-Grain Brown Rice off the back of a flatbed truck parked on the side of the road under the label of Wehah Farms (a combination of initials of the four brothers, Harlan, Weldon, Homer, Eldon, with their father). This same nutra-farmed short-grain brown rice is still their best seller today, along with their delicious long-grain brown rice. The brown rices are also available organically grown.
Harlan Lundberg is known for dabbling in exotic rices and has taken many rice- tasting trips to India. Obtaining seed of an Indian red rice from the seed bank in Aberdeen, Idaho (where 30,000 varieties of rice can sit waiting to be adopted for up to 20 years under refrigeration), he set to perfecting the rice marketed today as Wehani, an offshoot of the original farm name. He then went on to create the Black Japonica using parent stock from the Rice Research Station in Biggs, California, a seed bank owned by the California rice producers. His latest project is a speckled rice, still known as SP2, that looks like a pinto bean, a tasty red rice crossed with domestic southern long-grain. We can’t wait to try it.
ORGANIC RICE AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES
At this writing, there is no federal standard for organic rice. But there are several nonprofit and private organizations that certify rice, such as the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). They have strict requirements and the public has learned to trust and respect their logos on organic products. The number of acres devoted to organic rice in the United States is very small in proportion to the number devoted to regular rice-growing practices, but is steadily
growing. The field yields for organic rice are small and unpredictable, due to damage by insects and weeds, and average about half those of conventionally grown rice. Unless an artisan rice, most imported rices from Asia or India are not organic.
For rice to be certified organic by organizations such as the CCOF, the field used must be clean of the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, or any chemicals for three years before being marketed as an organic crop after harvest. Then the crop must be grown, harvested, stored, and milled under organic conditions, which means no nonorganic rice is processed at that facility without stringent cleaning of the equipment and separate storage units. It is very difficult to store organic rice and avoid insect problems without some sort of pesticide control. The final cost of milled organic rice is about three times that of conventional rice, but for purists, this is no deterrent. Since pesticide and fungicide residues would be found in the bran layer, brown rice is the most desirable crop for being organic. Polishing, the process that makes white rice, disposes of the bran layer, leaving the pristine, undisturbed heart of the grain. At our last shopping visit to the Japanese market, there were stacks of 10- and 20pound plastic bags of both long- and medium-grain organic California-grown brown rices, simply labeled as such.
Enter sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture practices growing foods without synthetic chemicals (insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides) and the soil is replenished with nutrients during the growing process. The new references to heirloom grain conservation describe the intentional cultivation and fostering of lesser known varieties of grain suited for human food by private plant breeders and mini-farmers with the goal of maintaining diversity. Having different characteristics than high-yield crops developed for long storage and mechanized harvesting techniques, heirloom crops are products of deliberately cultivated living gardens, often more flavorful and of different coloring and shape. Their gene pool is naturally resistant to disease and has adapted in the framework of a natural evolutionary cycle. These crops are described in terms of nutrition-per-acre rather than yield-per-acre. This is a language and way of looking at food production that will be gaining in acceptance and practice into the twenty-first century.
Despite these obstacles, we will be seeing a lot more delicious, organic rices, both white and brown, in the future, as the demand for untarnished foodstuffs continues to increase. Agricultural reform, in hand with a growing demand for these tasty, smaller yield heirloom grains, has made way for the Grain Revolution to flourish in your home kitchen. Seeds for Change Incan crop specialist Emigdio Ballon of New Mexico says it best: “The earth and the seeds, they represent life.”
JUST ADD WATER ?
Described as one of the chemical protagonists of the cooking process, indeed, water is the most important ingredient in the cooking of rice. It is a general consensus that if your tap water is good enough to drink, it will be good enough to cook with. But many cooks wouldn’t consider using tap water to make their rice. They use bottled or spring water or filtered water systems attached to their tap, since municipal sources and deep wells often contain hard minerals, chlorination, fluoride, or foreign material. Milk, fruit and vegetable juices, beer, wine, meat and vegetable stocks, and coconut milk may all be used as liquid substitutes in recipes, adding food value and a variety of flavor.
TO WASH OR NOT TO WASH
This is one of the places where rice asks to be treated with respect. While washing rice or not is a personal preference, the general rule is to wash or rinse imported rices and not to wash domestic rices, which are well cleaned and dried before packaging. Imported rices can have plenty of clinging starch left over from the processing, and your cooked rice will be downright gluey if you don’t wash it off prior to cooking.
However, don’t wash Arborio or the other Italian-style risotto rices; the starch makes the risotto creamy. And many Asian cooks would not think of cooking unwashed rice; it would defy tradition. Domestically produced Japanese-style rice is coated with powdered glucose or rice powder. It’s perfectly safe to eat, but washing off this whitish powder improves the flavor. New on the U.S. market is Japanese-style rice labeled “Musenmai” and “Rinse-free rice,” which does not have to be washed. This rice takes a bit more water to cook than regular rice, because rice absorbs some water during washing. Indian basmati must be rinsed; recipes often call for up to nine or ten rinsings. Boxed and packaged rices usually do not need washing or maybe just one rinse. Converted rice does not need rinsing.
To wash rice, place the measured rice in a bowl of cold tap water and swish it around with your hand until the water becomes cloudy. It will often be foamy around the edges. Tilt the bowl and carefully pour the water off or pour through a fine strainer. Rinse and return the rice to the bowl, if need be, and add more cold water. Repeat until the water stays clear, or nearly so. Most rices need at least two rinsings, but each batch of rice will be different; we have seen some basmatis take four. Purists wash for minutes and really use some muscle power.
Some recipes call for soaking the rice in cold water after washing and before cooking to soften the outer cell walls. This is a traditional technique in Turkish, Persian, and Indian cuisines. Some newer models of rice cookers have a built-in soaking cycle. You can soak rice in the sink, in a separate bowl, or in the rice cooker bowl, or leave the drained rice right in a mesh strainer for 10 to 30 minutes and let the grains soak up the water that is clinging to the grains.
TO SALT OR NOT TO SALT
Salt is a flavor enhancer. In the environment of the rice cooker, when salt is added as one of the ingredients, it is absorbed into each grain of rice during the cooking. We have detected that some rices, especially brown rices and the aromatic rices, can get a bit of a bitter edge from the salt, masking the delicate flavor of the rice. To salt or not to salt is a decision that you will have to make in your own kitchen, based on your own palate. The addition of salt to rice is purely personal preference and also varies depending on how you plan to serve it. For instance, if you are serving the rice with roasted meat, you might want to salt it to taste. If the rice will be served with a spicy curry or salty stir-fry, you wouldn’t need the salt.
We have specified salt in some of the recipes that follow, but you may choose to eliminate it without affecting the recipe adversely. If you do add salt, add it with the water and swirl a few times to evenly distribute. If you are using a stock that already has salt added, or miso, the rice will not need salt. Some unhulled rices, such as Wehani, are minimally processed and are always cooked without salt in order to ensure the most tender results.
Types of Salt
Salt is not just a blue box with a little girl in a raincoat and umbrella anymore; there are fine, downright exquisite, salts on the market.
Fine iodized table salt (mechanically removed from rock salt deposits, with potassium iodine and magnesium silicate added to prevent caking) and fine sea salt (from saline deposits at the edge of the sea) can be used interchangeably. Sun-evaporated, unrefined sea salts retain their complementary minerals, calcium, potassium, and magnesium, which give a distinct flavor reminiscent of the sea. We use La Baleine, an iodized sun-evaporated fine sea salt from the Mediterranean that contains no preservatives or anticaking agents (you’ll find it at the supermarket), or Japanese sea salt, which we buy at the Asian market. If you buy regular sea salt, you want fine-crystal, which is finer than table salt, or medium-crystal, which is ground like table salt. Kosher salt (which is mined, but contains no additives) is preferred by many cooks for its purity and milder flavor.
Coarse salts, usually for sprinkling after a food is cooked, must be ground in a salt grinder before being added to the cooking water. Ducros of Provence markets sea salt in its own disposable grinder. Celtic Sea Salt, touted by the macrobiotic community for its health-giving properties, is pale gray. Fleur de Sel de Guerande, from Brittany and available from King Arthur, is hand-harvested. Fleur de sel, the “flower of salt” that is the top layer in sun-evaporation pans
, is so coveted that the pretty white crystals are simply sprinkled over hot rice with some sweet butter. Take a chance and experiment with the flavor of salt as you would with any other premium ingredient.
REHEAT IN GRICE IN THE RICE COOKER
Some cooks make extra rice and have it for a day or two in the refrigerator, ready for quick meals. Other cooks would never think of using day-old rice. In case you need to reheat some rice, here’s how.
Place the cold rice in the rice cooker bowl. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons water (old rice will need a bit more water, new rice less) and break up the stiff clumps of cold rice. Cover and program for regular cycle. Steam until the timer sounds, about 10 minutes. Eat immediately and do not reheat again.
PERFECT BROWN RICE IN THE RICE COOKER
You will notice that the standard brown rice capacity of rice cookers is lower than their capacity for white rice. This is because brown rice must cook longer to become tender, and therefore you must start off with more water than for white rices. If you overload your rice cooker, you’ll face a messy boil over.
If your machine has a Brown Rice cycle, use it. But because most rice cookers do not have one, we put together these charts using the regular cycle.
During testing, we learned two surprising things about cooking brown rice. The first is that long- and medium-grain brown rice require the same amount of water. (On the stove, long-grain rice takes more water.) The second thing we discovered almost by accident: It is possible to exceed the brown rice capacities listed in the brown rice cooking chart. In fact, you can cook as much brown rice in your rice cooker as you can white rice; 4 cups in a 4-cup cooker, 6 cups in a 6-cup cooker, 10 cups in a 10-cup cooker. What about those messy boilovers we mentioned above? The trick we discovered is detailed in the chart below, Stretching the Brown Rice Capacity of Your Rice Cooker. When the rice has finished steaming, open the cover, fluff the rice, and re-cover the rice to keep it warm. Do not leave brown rice on the Keep Warm cycle for longer than 1 or 2 hours, as it has a tendency to begin fermenting.
The Ultimate Rice Cooker Page 9