Rice - How did you experience it today?

[cstout]

Rice speaks all languages & fulfills every need.It is always there to fill in the gaps of a budget meal or eager to show off exotic spices & flavorings.

Tell us about your favorite way to eat it & cook it.

Is there a particular brand you prefer or method of cooking it?

[TorontoJo]

Sometimes the best rice is just steamed white rice doused with the sauce from a great Chinese dish, in this case my mom's Chengdu braised pork ribs. Made a big batch over the weekend for some friends (with pork belly instead of ribs), and even when the pork belly was gone, we were all happy to just eat the rice with the sauce. I made another batch the other night and chose to have just rice and sauce for lunch yesterday. Comforting and delicious.

[huiray]

Yes indeed. I eat most of my rice as boiled white rice "accompanied with" (in the Chinese meaning) some sort of dish or two. The dishes don't even need to have sauce, really; they just need to be tasty.

Ever tried white rice simply with chili sauce on it? :-)

[TorontoJo]

Yep, that's how I grew up eating rice. Any tasty Chinese dish -- dry or saucy -- tastes better with white rice to me. :) But I do have a weakness for rice and sauce! I'll have to try with just chili sauce one of these days, thanks.

[huiray]

I eat a lot of rice. It's a staple for me, not "just an occasional" ingredient. I eat it with a wide array of foods and dishes from many different cuisines - Regional Chinese (mostly Cantonese), Japanese, SE Asian/Thai/Malaysian/Singaporean/Nyonya, Regional Indian (mostly Southern-type), etc. Mostly as boiled white rice (don't like brown rice), leftover white rice often gets turned into fried rice with all sorts of mix-ins but mostly along "Chinese"/SE Asian styles. Sometimes I make biryani-like rice; sometimes simpler mixtures with olive oil, pistachios, cardamom pods, fried shallots, bay leaves; sometimes with dried basil (yes, *dried* crumbled basil) and a bit of salt & oil - it's surprisingly good. Other times I make Hainanese Chicken rice - using the gingery salted broth/chicken stock from poaching (a) whole chicken(s), sometimes augmented with additional rendered chicken fat. Sometimes I make congee (jook/chook) Cantonese-style; one example would be with pork spare ribs (short-cut across the rib, Chinese-style) sautéed with lots and lots of finely julienned fresh ginger, "quenched" with water or broth, simmered till almost soft, rice added, simmered more till desired consistency is achieved.

Etc etc.

[Berheenia]

The only brown rice my husband will eat is Uncle Ben's- something about the converted rice process is my guess. I think I'll buy a biryani type rice as we are out of white. I haven't had it since we got a rice cooker several years ago. Does it work well in the steamer or is it better boiled stove top? I have been buying mostly jasmine lately and want a change.

[huiray]

I don't use a rice cooker. All my rice is done on the stove top. Mostly basmati - both Indian and Pakistani types. So - sorry, Can't really answer your question; but perhaps others may pipe in here. As for biryanis - yes, one normally uses basmati rice.

[JungMann]

You can cook basmati in a rice cooker. Just soak for about 10 minutes, discard the rice water, add 2 times the water in proportion to rice and proceed as normal. You can fluff with ghee at the end if you desire.

When my father made basmati in the rice cooker, he usually included whole spices and/or peas for Pakistani style rice.

[cleopatra999]

I have been on a brown rice risotto kick, especially laden with all the fresh crisp asparagus that is floating around, sometimes throwing in shrimp or pancetta. Very time consuming (takes me about 2 hours to get it just right, I use the stir less method), but well worth it!

[huiray]

Do you cook the asparagus with the risotto so that it is very soft?

Just my personal preference but I hate asparagus in any form that has been cooked beyond crisp and crunchy and any mushy asparagus repels me.

[cleopatra999]

nope, I blanch it while I am making my stock with celery, carrots, onions. then take it out and leave the stem ends in the broth, and add chicken base to that before use. I chop up and add my asparagus right at the end to warm them.

agreed, I hate mushy, stringy asparagus.

[Tripeler]

We had rice with Japanese-style breakfast, which included fried edamame fritters, natto (fermented soybeans), cabbage pickles, miso soup with tofu, spinach and little mushrooms, fresh grapes, and green tea. The rice we ate is "haiga-mai" which is white rice with the germ still attached. This kind of rice is a compromise between my wife (likes white rice best) and me (likes brown rice best).

[huiray]

Bravo.
Hope folks who turn pale at the thought of anything more than toast and a soft boiled egg in the morning see your post. :-)

[HillJ]

http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/2009/0...
Vegetable biryani for dinner using this recipe as a simple guide.

[John Francis]

My go-to rice is brown jasmine rice - wonderful flavor, you can eat it plain with nothing added. I get it from Trader Joe's, which seems as good as any. As for cooking, brown rice always takes longer and often requires more water than you expect before it's as tender as you want it; I leave it cooking for half an hour before checking it, and let it cook longer and add more water if necessary. No appliance necessary, just a saucepan on the gas stove.

[flylice2x]

wash 2 cups Calrose Shirakiku Brand white rice mixed with 1 cup Nishiki brown rice in a Zojirushi rice cooker. Let soak for 1 hour to soften grains. Cook.

Put 2 scoops of rice on a plate, top with grilled onions, 2 patties of hamburger or portugese sausage. Cover with brown gravy and top with fried egg.

[cstout]

Would you fix mine with a hamburger pattie, please? Sounds like a great meal!!

[cstout]

Would you top mine with hamburger patty, Please. That sounds like a great meal!!

[NoodleQueen]

Ah, loco moco. I have never understood its appeal, although my dad craves it from time to time.

[anakalia]

Just got back from south India and was craving rice. Tonight, I made curd rice ... Mixed cooked basmati with whole milk yogurt, and mixed in a mixture of mustard seeds, cumin seeds, curry leaves and a few urad dal fried in ghee, then salted. Perfect for our 90-plus degree days here in Virginia this week!

[AlkieGourmand]

Yum. That's a great meal.

[tzakiel]

For me, rice is best enjoyed very purely: a bowl of plain white steamed rice, served with something salty like a stir fry or Chinese stew.

[cstout]

Yes, indeed - a bowl of perfect white steamed rice is the beginning of a simple yet wonderful meal. Just want to thank everyone for sharing your bowl of rice with the rest of us.

If there is rice in the house, the possibilities are limitless as to what we can put in there...am really enjoying reading these posts.

[AlkieGourmand]

I made a revelatory rice dish today. I found the recipe in Taste of Nepal by Jyoti Pathak. This is an excellent cookbook by any standards. It's especially remarkable for an obscure cuisine like Nepali.

Anyway, what made this particular recipe special is that black cumin (i.e., kala jeera) is sauteed in ghee, along with bay leaf, to make a pilaf. After cooking, fried almonds, cashews, raisins, and onions are added on top.

I've used black cumin before, but never with great success. In this dish though, it's a real winner. The aroma from the black cumin is earthy and smoky. It's a serious spice that takes the otherwise tasty pilaf to another level and adds an element of exoticness. You can buy black cumin at Penzey's, Indian food stores, or online.

Here's my adaptation of the recipe. The only significant alteration to the recipe in Ms. Pathak's book is that I paid no attention to her instructions on how to boil the basmati rice. I successfully make basmati rice all the time following a procedure in Raghavan Iyer's book 660 Curries; I see no reason to deviate.

Rinse one cup of basmati rice several times until drain water is no longer very cloudy (about 4 rinses). I use Tilda rice.
Soak rice in water for 30 minutes. Drain. Dry rice to the extent reasonably possible using paper towels or kitchen towels.
Heat a tablespoon or two of ghee in a saucepan over medium-high heat.
Saute one bay leaf and one teaspoon of black cumin until fragrant (about 5-10 seconds).
Add basmati rice and saute for a minute or two to add a slightly toasty flavor.
Pour in 1.5 cups of water and one teaspoon of salt.
Bring to a boil. Continue boiling until water drops below rice and bubbly craters appear on top of rice.
Stir quickly to mix ingredients evenly, cover, and cook on lowest setting for ten minutes. (On an electric stove, have a burner preheated to low).
Remove rice from heat.
(Optional) Remove lid, wipe lid dry, place kitchen towel over pot, and replace lid snugly. The purpose is to absorb excess moisture.
Let rice stand for ten minutes.
In the meantime, heat oil in pan on medium heat.
Saute 1/4 cup of blanched almond slivers and cashew halves until light brown. Remove and dry on paper towels
Saute a small handful of golden raisins (soaked for about 5 minutes and dried) until brown and puffy (about 10-15 seconds). Remove and dry on paper towels.
Raise heat and saute half to all of a medium onion, sliced thinly, until brown (about 7 minutes). If you use a red onion, it will be an attractive deep purplish brown. Salt to taste.
Serve rice topped with onions, nuts, and raisins.

[cstout]

Loved your method of making rice....thanks for sharing.

[winepoet]

basmati for chinese although I have switched to udon noodles becuase... I finally broke down and leaned to make risotto and make it enough that when I do chinese was tired of rice. I love the variety of recipes for risotto have done seafood paella risotto shrimp spinach lemon - from epicurious americas test kitchen mushroom and done those enough that most times I just wing it - will be doing a farmers market one later this week - squash spinach and probably the last fm asparagus for the season. Question if you are making a vegetable risotto what do you use as the broth/stock have not come up with a easy (or tasty) vegetable stock. THe last vege only risotto the vegetable stock took 3 times longer than cooking the risotto.

[AlkieGourmand]

Glad you liked it.

[huiray]

Yesterday - fried rice using leftover boiled basmati (2 days old). Minced chuck, good splash of fish sauce (nuoc mam), a well made in the frying mince and three eggs broken into it, allowed to fry slightly then scrambled lightly in situ then the rice dumped in, allowed to soak up residual unsolidified egg then the whole mixture tossed/stirred around*; leftover "Yin Choy" (edible Amaranth, red-streaked variety), previously stir-fried w/ chopped garlic, dumped in and the mix stirred; LOTS of chopped green onions & cilantro dumped in; and the whole finished off and left covered for a few minutes.**

* Stirring is NOT continuous. One leaves the mix to "sit" for a short while, then the mix is stirred/tossed; allowed to sit for a short while again, then stirred again and so on. Yes, the pan is scraped with a spatula to get the slightly crisp bits off the bottom. The whole mix should be free-moving and "loose" by the latter stages.
** Covering it allows the rice to be steam-finished, so to speak, to fluff up and further loosen the rice a bit.

[foodslut]

As onigiri--cooked Japanese rice filled with umeboshi (pickled plum) made into triangles (by salted hands) and wrapped in nori seaweed. YUM!

[cacruden]

I had "organic" white jasmine rice. I do it row safe easy way of using the measuring cup that came with the rice cooker (Hitachi) and poured it in. I then added some water and washed by using one had and rubbing the rice in one hand then moving around the until I have worked all of the rice (just pouring water in and swishing does not get the "starch" off well). I then poured the cloudy water out carefully getting rid of as much as possible and then repeated the process. The water was then very clear (up to the level indicated on the rice cooker)..... then let the rice cooker do the job. The rice came out fantastic .... and not much work.... I use "Great Harvest" (did not see it in Canada) brand if I buy it at the supermarket - the quality is actually quite good and fresh.

I was retrained on how to make rice by a japanese lady (my washing skills apparently were sub-par).

[cacruden]

Oh, and then I served it with Pat Grapaow Nuea (Stir Fried Beef with Holy Basil and Chilies). The picture is of a one I had a few weeks ago - one that I bought so not today's rice (did not take a picture today).

[huiray]

If you want to (or need to) wash your rice, another quick and really efficient way is to put just enough water into your container/pot so as to barely cover it, form a fist with one hand, then "grind" the rice in a circular motion with that fist several times. (Think mortar-and-pestle with fist and a slurry of rice) Decant the thoroughly white/opaque liquid thick with fine white particles, rinse, repeat if desired (usually not needed), rinse till satisfied. Very quick.

[cacruden]

The process of washing is fairly quick (maybe a couple minutes). I use to do one rinse, but I find two times is better.

[Uncle Bob]

Boudin for breakfast...........

[cstout]

Boudin...good way to get your rice for the day...breakfast of champions or something like that.

[augustiner]

short grain white rice cooked with pearl barley and millet. eaten with hand-sliced grilled pork belly (korean samgyeopsal), kimchi, raw garlic, ssamjang or a fermented soybean-chile based sauce, with sesame oil and salt. wrapped up in lettuce. but its usually short grain white rice, plain, in the rice cooker. though i've taken a liking to vietnamese style broken jasmine rice, which i enjoy texturally.

[smaki]

Maki sushi brunch made with short grain brown rice. Shared with a friend who had never had sushi before. Dipped in soy sauce and wasabi in little bowls eaten with chop sticks. Maki sushi kinds consumed today include: cucumber, tuna, and Philadelphia. Home made pickled ginger between bites and on some (recipe below). Side dish of sliced BBQ pork with individual dipping dishes of very hot mustard, spiced catchup, and sesame seeds. Also on side we both had a bowl of egg drop chicken broth with vegetable soup. Drank ice water, sake, and hot China black tea. A good meal would eat anytime.

How I made the rice today: Brown rice is better for us than white. Short grain rice has more starch so is better for sushi. When have tried to roll long grain rice find will not stick because has less starch. One part rice to two parts water brought to boil then lid on heat turned down to simmer 50 minutes without taking the top off low enough bottom will not burn but bubbles if check it - mix in 1T sugar dissolved in 3T rice vinegar, then sit 10-20 minutes more with lid on. Fluff with fork. Spread on a metal cookie sheet let cool to room temperature then put in fridge. Did ahead of time because cold rice does not cook fish. Tuna sushi grade center cut loin from reliable source always cold is good cold red raw.

To made the pickled ginger at home: use one pound of small fresh ginger pealed with a spoon sliced thin with a sharp knife put in 3 parts rice vinegar to 1 part granulated sugar with a little salt decent after about three days good to go in a week. For one pound in a quart mason jar I start with one cup rice vinegar and 1/3 cup of sugar with 1 tsp of sea salt. Results in 24 oz of pickled ginger with a ginger juice that can be used in cooking and to make special drinks. I store in a mason jar that will probably keep for months, but do not know as mine is gone in a few weeks.

[swampcabbage]

Left over jasmine rice as garlic fried rice with kaktugi kimchi for breakfast. So good. Then disappointed my mother while discussing Thanksgiving dinners while growing up and how much I never really liked wild "rice" She never noticed that I never ate it.

[cstout]

I found out a long time ago some things are best left unsaid. Unfortunately, I found out AFTER I said some things. Next time you see her, just give her a hug hug & tell her you love her no matter what she cooks. Hope she is still alive for you to do that.

[deet13]

Favorite way to eat rice is in freshly cut and boiled boudin blanc with a healthy dose of hot sauce.

Favorite way to cook boudin blanc is in a crock pot set to low, w/salted water.

No one particular brand.

[DonShirer]

Today it was Chicken Curry with arugula over Jasmine Rice.

[ChiliDude]

Uncle Ben's Converted Rice for years and years. It still has some of the nutrients that plain white rice is missing. We never use quick cooking rice.

We cook it using a recipe originally published in the NYTimes half a century or so by Craig Claiborne with some variations. There are only 2 of us in our home now. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Using a ceramic vessel with a lid, add about 2 tsp. olive oil and a 1/4" thick pat of butter, heat on cooktop until butter is melted. Add a 1/2 tsp. turmeric for color and antibiotic effect, a 1/4 tsp. of ground cayenne to the liquids. Stir in 1 cup of rice, stirring until rice is well coated, then add 1 and 1/3 cups of water and cover the vessel. Bring to a boil, then transfer the rice to the hot oven for 17 minutes. Remove the vessel and fluff the cooked rice with a fork. Serve!

We usually prepare rice this way when I make chicken paprikash. We use boneless chicken thighs to make the paprikash because thighs have a richer flavor than breast meat.

Vivi, ama, ridi e mangia bene (Live, love, laugh and eat well)! Buon appetito!

[cstout]

NY Times rice recipe...how did you remember after all these years where you got that recipe? Amazing. Would this recipe work in Stir Fries?

Yes, I always use chicken thighs instead of breast meat...just too dry no matter how you fix them.

I'll toast to that !!

[ChiliDude]

We make rice quite often so the method is not difficult to remember. Rice goes well with stir fries. My wife makes a beef stir fry which is served over cooked rice.

[BabsW]

For today's lunch, I made coconut-curry jasmine rice. The other day, I made saffron rice with green peas.

My kids' usual favorite is my quinoa & rice pilaf. We eat a lot of rice around here. :-)

[cstout]

Your rice dishes sound wonderful....bet the saffron rice with peas was very colorful & enticing. Thanks for the ideas.

[cstout]

Just visited rasamalaysia.com & found a recipe for Spam fried rice. How American is that? Anyway, I think I will try that today since I always keep a can of Spam around for emergencies when it is past time for a trip to the grocery.

[Wtg2Retire]

I have used Spam when I did not have ham for the fried rice. It is not bad at all.

[JungMann]

I think spam fried rice is totally Asian. I don't know very Americans outside of Hawaii who would've even encountered it. Spam musubi, on the other hand, definitely a Hawaiian original and definitely delicious.

Having grown up Asian myself, the transition to a low-ish carb diet was rough mainly because it was incomprehensible to eat a meal without rice. Now I crave it fried with roast pork, browned to a crisp in bibimbap, perfumed with saffron and herbs in biryani. I drink it at home with green tea where the toasted rice gives the tea a nutty flavor. I eat crispy bits of pounded immature rice in candy. Last I had it, it was cooked with chickpeas and drowned in the gravy from a wet beef curry.

[cstout]

Toasted rice in tea...never heard of that, but I sure would think it is good. You are indeed a lover of all things rice. Thanks for the taste trip.

[JungMann]

Genmaicha is green tea with brown rice. I prefer it over regular green tea. Koreans also squeeze every last drop of flavor from rice by making a sort of tea/soup with the scorched rice left at the bottom of the pot to end meals.

[Wtg2Retire]

I learned how to make fried rice when I lived in Japan. Would go to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and watch the chef make fried rice.

[cstout]

Tell us how the "hole in the wall" chef made the fried rice.

The only thing I ever learned was not to order anything "off the wall" in a "hole in the wall" joint. This especially holds true if it is too dim in there to get a good look at what you ordered.

Yes, please tell us how the chef made fried rice.

[Wtg2Retire]

I've never put it in writing. Will have to see if my daughter has, because that is the way she prepares fried rice, too. If she hasn't, I will work on writing instructions.

[Berheenia]

Last night we threw 3 packs of Goya Yellow Rice in the rice cooker for a lunch today for 12 people and made ourselves a cup of Uncle Ben's brown rice on the stove top.

[cstout]

Wow, that is a lot of rice...did you add other things to your rice?

[Berheenia]

A can of TJ's organic pinto beans and some corn were added to the cooked yellow rice. It was a donation.

[Naguere]

Well yes cstout, the rice is just the base. a turkey breast yesterday.

Keeping away from wheat i sub my morning roll with cold cooked rice and
a tomato salad to go with my boiled egg.

and fried rice, well you can play tunes on that, no holds barred on what
you add to it.

[jwg]

when I don't have the energy to think about dinner, I use the goya yellow rice ("saffron" but I really wonder if there is saffron in it), water, and put chicken pieces on top, slice some frozen Italian sausage on top if I have it. Throw in oven on bake. Atfer 30 minutes, throw in frozen peas and olives on top, and cook until the water is absorbed and chicken is done. 15-30 more minutes. I'd throw in capers, but family complains. Whether you call it arroz con pollo or fake paella (when I have shrimp to throw in), family will eat it and like it.

[Naguere]

I have gone over to buying in bulk from Amazon.

A 3Kg bag of Brown Basmati for £6.69, delivered to my door (post free)

I cook up once, but for three portions, eat one hot, and either microblast or stirfry

the other two,

once cooked (30 mins) there is no more effort

[cstout]

Brown Basmati...looks like you got a bargain there - good for you!

[magiesmom]

rice pudding baked with coconut milk.

[cstout]

Never had rice pudding with coconut milk, but I am certainly going to try & find a recipe for that...yum stuff, I bet.

[sandylc]

I make a bruleed rice pudding with brown rice. Now I'm going to substitute coconut milk for some of the cream......great idea!

[toodie jane]

my favorite way, too, to make rice pudding. I use leftover brown rice from my take out Thai meal, and Lots of eggs & vanilla bean. . use a water bath.

[PAO]

Better yet, BLACK rice pudding with coconut milk. A Thai restaurant staple.

[HillJ]

I've never tried it with black rice but I have made chocolate rice pudding with coconut milk and it was this wonderful combo of chocolate pudding and creamy rice pudding that worked out so beautifully.

Black rice is hard to come by in my area.

[HillJ]

http://viciousange.blogspot.com/2010/...
cstout, this is the recipe I followed.

[HillJ]

magiesmom, do you bake in the oven, stovetop or both when you make coconut rice pudding? Bill Granger's recipe with caramelized pineapple or bananas is my favorite way to go and he oven bakes with foil for the first 30 mins and then removes to top brown the last 10. So good.

How do you make yours?

[dfrostnh]

I don't care for all the work required to make risottos but for some reason had a small bag of aborio rice. I decided to make rice with caramelized onions and spinach which was marked in my recipe folder as 'very good'. Apparently, that's why I bought aborio rice in the first place.

[cstout]

Aborio with caramelized onions & spinach...another excellent combination. Don't you just love to find one of those recipes you forgot about & it is marked "very good" ?

In fact, today I picked up a cookbook today & a handwrtten recipe fell out with a recipe for Jalapeno Chicken from my boss from several years back. It said "delicious" & I remember it being exactly that!

[jwg]

last week, made amazing risotto with fresh asparagus. really worth the effort, especially as I trained my son 11 yo son to stir the rice as I ran to the train to pick up DH.

[fmed]

I was too lazy and busy to cook so I made a chicken, lop cheong, shiitake mushroom rice in the rice cooker. I haven't done that since university. I used regular white long-grain rice.

[cstout]

Lop cheong...will have to google that.

[fmed]

Oops..."Chinese Sausage".

And here is a recipe: http://www.noobcook.com/chicken-lup-c...

(It's really a "no-recipe" kind of meal. You literally throw a bunch of stuff on top of the rice in the rice cooker, turn it on, then come back in a half-hour. I did first marinate the chicken is a simple soya/ginger/garlic/sesame oil mixture and soak the shiitake in hot water though.).

[cstout]

I enjoyed the link you gave...really liked the chicken recipe, but I will have to come up with something besides Chinese Sausage..not to be had around where I live. I also copied the honey chicken wings....wings in any recipe is good to me. Thanks.

[fmed]

You can leave out the sausage. Or replace it with some other cured sausage e.g. chorizo or meat e.g. pancetta. It won't taste the same, of course. Don't think of it as a recipe - think of it as a technique.

[cstout]

Just curious, what ingredients is Chinese sausage made of? I am a lover of sausage & sure would like to try some, is there a particular brand you like?

[fmed]

Lop cheong is dry-cured and made of fatty pork, and flavoured with soy, five-spice, rice wine, white pepper etc. It is sweet. Some versions are very sweet. Some versions have liver but I prefer the non-liver ones. It is glossy when cut just like certain salami.

A good quick way to prepare it is to slice it diagonally, and cook in a frying pan with a bit of water...let cook until the fat renders out and begins to fry the sausage. Once the slices are nicely caramelized, you can eat it with rice. Here is a CH thread on it http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/757849

Here in Vancouver, we have access to really great lop cheong. I buy it from a well known purveyor in Chinatown called Dollar Meats. I buy the ones hanging in the store but they also sell vacuum packages. (Here are some pics of Dollar Meats http://www.wisemonkeysblog.com/pictor... ).

Seek them out at a Chinese grocers. If you don't have one nearby, I'm sure you can order it online. I think the most well-known US brand is Kam Yen Jan from Seattle.

[NoodleQueen]

My mom makes exactly the same thing and it is one of my favorites. She also adds dried shrimp.

What I'd give for a big bowl of it with white pepper and fresh cilantro!

[TeRReT]

I've got some nice short grain rice. Always just stick it in the rice cooker and turn it on and let it do its thing. What I do with it after can range from simple stir fry beside/on the rice to a cha han or fried rice, can go into sushi/maki or onigiri. Or if we're really really lazy, just a bowl of white rice with various condiments like some pickled plum, miso paste, seaweed or a raw egg whipped and put on top.

The rice I have is pretty fresh and no brand, my fiancee's family gets it from an uncle or brother or something, he has a rice farm and we get bags of it still in its husk and we put 10kg through a machine every few weeks to husk it.

[cstout]

Cha han, onigiri..I guess these you get at an Asian market..more googling to do to find out what that is.

[TeRReT]

cha han is just a Japanese flavoured Chinese fried rice, I generally just make it at home. Onigiri is basically a rice ball, sometimes filled with things, I also often just make those at home, though they are available in all the convenience stores and grocery stores here as well and make a nice quick healthy and inexpensive snack.

[sandylc]

I learned how to rinse and steam rice very well....then the carb phobes got to me and I am afraid to eat it very often. We did have some yummy risotto last week....that reminds me there's a bit left in the fridge to make arancini......

[cstout]

Yep, carbs seem to be a frightening thing now days, but I always say, "everything in moderation". Ha.

[shallots]

Today our rice was Basmati, cooked two days ago, and microwaved tonight to go under a version of Stir Fry Dry Venison with carrots and celery and garlic with hot bean paste with garlic.
(close to a recipe I loved in Calgary)

[AlkieGourmand]

I like TIlda basmati rice the best. I learned my favorite method for cooking it in Raghavan Iyer's 660 Curries:

Wash 1 cup of rice to get rid of starchy excess.

Soak in 1.5 cups of cold water for 30 minutes. Add salt to taste.

Heat on medium high until water evaporates from above rice and craters appear in the rice. Stir around.

Cover and cook on low for 10 minutes.

Let rest for 10 minutes. I place a towel under the lid beforehand to absorb moisture and also wipe the lid to remove excess moisture.

Often, I make a pilaf based on that recipe. I stir-fry some ingredients and spices in ghee or oil, then add the drained rice and toast for a while, then add the water---the rest of the recipe is the same.

My favorite rice that few people know about is called samba. It's a Sri Lankan variety of rice that has a funky flavor and aroma. You can buy it online.