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April 3, 2021
It's not rocket science but also like many things in life there's not just
one way. There are so many people in the world, especially in conservative
places like my country who think "hey, this is the way you have to do X" and
life is simply not this strict. However, one aspect in life where this is
particularly common across the world is cooking and dishes in general,
especially traditional dishes.
I learned three broad ways of cooking white rice (paella, sushi are
completely different monsters)
This is the way I learned how to cook rice and I've never seen it outside my
country but the thing is (at least my mom and other relatives):
You take a cup of rice with chopped onions, garlic, paprika (?) and carrot,
toss it in the pan and stir-fry everything with vegetable oil until rice
looks transparent and then you add two cups of water with salt, let it boil
or just pour in boiled water to make it faster and simmer for ten, fifteen
minutes over a Chilean toaster (a small grilled thing you put below the pan
) and it's done. The toaster deserves its own article but the whole point of
it is to make it easier not to burn the rice. Of course, it only makes sense
if you have a gas stove which is what most people use.
Now my issues with this recipe is that you have to be very careful with
water as rice is supposed to suck all water and rice ends up all oily which
might not be too healthy. This is usually done to help rice grains stay
separated as Chileans don't like fluffy/sticky rice.
I started questioning myself two aspects on the Chilean white rice:
1. We don't wash the rice
2. We fry the rice
Since the Chilean toaster is not widely available everywhere else I assumed
rice could be cooked in some other way and also I learned that rice contains
arsenic and it should be eliminated somehow. I read that you could wash the
rice and get rid of the arsenic in it so there I proceeded with a new way to
cook it.
Instead of frying the rice I started making true white rice so I didn't stir
fry anything or if I did I just separated it from the rice process.
Therefore I washed the rice several times until water looked relatively clean
(this is achieved after four to six times). Then I added double the water
and cooked in more or less the same way but without the toaster and paying
more attention to the stove.
Of course, in this way you end up with a rice that's less flavourful but
it's edible. If you add too much water or cook it too little you'll get
fluffy rice so that's why a lot of people don't like to do this over here.
However, it should be healthier and the fluff part depends entirely on
preparation.
A few months ago I saw a video on Youtube examining all this rice
preparation and the cultural aspect behind it. How people are extremely
careful and zealous about processes, especially when your mom does things a
specific way (remember the Chinese guy and the BBC Indian girl?).
This video (from Adam Ragusea) explains that washing rice doesn't help much
with the arsenic, thus I was just wasting time. So the process was more
simple. Allegedly, South (East? Indians?) Asian cook rice like we cook
pasta. You just boil water and then add the amount of rice you want without
even caring about proportions and then drain it.
I've found that by doing this heat gets lost more easily and takes a bit more
time to cook the rice (as you can't close the lid completely). However, if
you are careful you don't get too sticky rice and the result is very similar
to the previous one.
For me the last process is the easiest and I've been doing it this way ever
since. However, I wonder if I should soak the rice to increase the
elimination of arsenic from grains.
I should also say that I care about this because I love rice, although I
don't care for sushi but I love when I think I need to make rice. It makes
me happy.