I'm looking forward to part 2! I live in China and rice or noodles are inescapable 3 times a day. What alternatives do you tend to cook with when you want a dish that normally comes with rice, but you feel like you need some space? Please don't say potatoes, my English upbringing put potatoes on every plate 😂
Don‘t ever dis potatoes to someone who lives in Germany. I grew up with lots of options, including bulgur, but I gravitate naturally to rice. Yes, you will find part 2 fascinating. I will get around to it soon. Thanx for reading.
I ate my first sticky rice in Thailand in February—sticky rice with mango and coconut sauce. It was eye-opening. When I returned home, I bought sticky rice and made it myself. The results were not bad, but I didn’t use a steamer and I think it might work better if I I do.
Arsenic in rice is bad enough but I wonder how much dioxin from Agent Orange has found its way into rice grown in Vietnam.
Your mango sticky rice moment in Thailand is one of the great rice revelations - that combination of warm glutinous rice, cold coconut cream, and ripe mango is one of the few dishes that is exactly as good as it sounds.
And yes, a steamer makes a real difference.
Sticky rice absorbs water too readily when boiled - steaming lets it cook in its own time, grain by grain, which is what gives it that particular texture: yielding but not wet, cohesive but not gluey.
A bamboo steamer over a wok is the traditional method and still the best.
On the Agent Orange question - you're right to wonder, and it's a serious issue, but the pathway is not primarily through rice.
Dioxin accumulates in fat, which means it concentrates up the food chain into animals - ducks, free-range chickens, fish - rather than into plant foods like rice. Studies of exported Vietnamese food have found only low dioxin levels across the board.
The real contamination remains localized around former US airbase hotspots, particularly around Bien Hoa, where people eating locally raised animals near the contaminated sites are still being exposed fifty years later. That is an ongoing environmental injustice of the first order.
But the rice itself - including the sticky rice you ate in Thailand - is not the primary vector.
The grain has enough to answer for with the arsenic.
It doesn't need Agent Orange to further complicate things.
I grew up with Uncle Ben's and what ever rice was dominant in the country we lived in at the time (Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, the Netherlands). In college, I encountered Basmati and Patna; in the US as an adult, Jasmine, Arborio, Forbidden City, and Sushi and several other varieties became available. Each required learning a new technique. There's a lot to learn. I am so glad you have put to do much into this subject. Thank you.
I immediately identified with the "two starches" comment. Growing up in Peru, long-grain white rice was part of practically every meal, often alongside potatoes, and I remember being surprised when I moved to the U.S. and people reacted with "Two starches?" 😂
Lovely. In my parents' home, as well as their parents' homes, basmati was reserved exclusively for parties/ guests. The common take was that 'it looks good but has zero taste.' Instead, the rice we truly relished was always the local, short-grain variety, and the most cherished of all was the rice from the pahad, the mountains
Rice is the core carbohydrate in India and dates back 3000 years, if not older, to the Chola dynasty, which grew powerful because of rice agriculture and their practices.
You are correct about the structures of the different rice varietals.
Lets start with basmati, preferred for biryani, always fluffed into individual grains, as you have so rightly pointed out. The technique is interesting; the rice is precooked and drained, removing any extracted starch. This was the Persian way.
In South India, from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, we have palaos (derived from pilaf), wherein the starches are kept in the dish, the rice small grain varieties usually, and the palao stick and more congealed, a texture they prfer.
Interestingly, in Chettinad, they use the water that we wash the rice with, called "mandi", the white water that you get from initially rinsing the rice, as you have suggested, to make curries. The low-washable starch adds a mild thickness; think of its purpose as similar to a light roux in soups.
This is a fascinating topic you have written about.
Today I’m having sticky rice with my lunch and basmati rice with my dinner. I live in New York City, so all rice is good rice. 😄
You don’t necessarily have to live in NY to have come to that conclusion. Indeed, all rice is good.
I'm looking forward to part 2! I live in China and rice or noodles are inescapable 3 times a day. What alternatives do you tend to cook with when you want a dish that normally comes with rice, but you feel like you need some space? Please don't say potatoes, my English upbringing put potatoes on every plate 😂
Don‘t ever dis potatoes to someone who lives in Germany. I grew up with lots of options, including bulgur, but I gravitate naturally to rice. Yes, you will find part 2 fascinating. I will get around to it soon. Thanx for reading.
I ate my first sticky rice in Thailand in February—sticky rice with mango and coconut sauce. It was eye-opening. When I returned home, I bought sticky rice and made it myself. The results were not bad, but I didn’t use a steamer and I think it might work better if I I do.
Arsenic in rice is bad enough but I wonder how much dioxin from Agent Orange has found its way into rice grown in Vietnam.
Your mango sticky rice moment in Thailand is one of the great rice revelations - that combination of warm glutinous rice, cold coconut cream, and ripe mango is one of the few dishes that is exactly as good as it sounds.
And yes, a steamer makes a real difference.
Sticky rice absorbs water too readily when boiled - steaming lets it cook in its own time, grain by grain, which is what gives it that particular texture: yielding but not wet, cohesive but not gluey.
A bamboo steamer over a wok is the traditional method and still the best.
On the Agent Orange question - you're right to wonder, and it's a serious issue, but the pathway is not primarily through rice.
Dioxin accumulates in fat, which means it concentrates up the food chain into animals - ducks, free-range chickens, fish - rather than into plant foods like rice. Studies of exported Vietnamese food have found only low dioxin levels across the board.
The real contamination remains localized around former US airbase hotspots, particularly around Bien Hoa, where people eating locally raised animals near the contaminated sites are still being exposed fifty years later. That is an ongoing environmental injustice of the first order.
But the rice itself - including the sticky rice you ate in Thailand - is not the primary vector.
The grain has enough to answer for with the arsenic.
It doesn't need Agent Orange to further complicate things.
I grew up with Uncle Ben's and what ever rice was dominant in the country we lived in at the time (Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, South Africa, the Netherlands). In college, I encountered Basmati and Patna; in the US as an adult, Jasmine, Arborio, Forbidden City, and Sushi and several other varieties became available. Each required learning a new technique. There's a lot to learn. I am so glad you have put to do much into this subject. Thank you.
I immediately identified with the "two starches" comment. Growing up in Peru, long-grain white rice was part of practically every meal, often alongside potatoes, and I remember being surprised when I moved to the U.S. and people reacted with "Two starches?" 😂
Lovely. In my parents' home, as well as their parents' homes, basmati was reserved exclusively for parties/ guests. The common take was that 'it looks good but has zero taste.' Instead, the rice we truly relished was always the local, short-grain variety, and the most cherished of all was the rice from the pahad, the mountains
Such a thoughtful post.
Rice is the core carbohydrate in India and dates back 3000 years, if not older, to the Chola dynasty, which grew powerful because of rice agriculture and their practices.
You are correct about the structures of the different rice varietals.
Lets start with basmati, preferred for biryani, always fluffed into individual grains, as you have so rightly pointed out. The technique is interesting; the rice is precooked and drained, removing any extracted starch. This was the Persian way.
In South India, from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, we have palaos (derived from pilaf), wherein the starches are kept in the dish, the rice small grain varieties usually, and the palao stick and more congealed, a texture they prfer.
Interestingly, in Chettinad, they use the water that we wash the rice with, called "mandi", the white water that you get from initially rinsing the rice, as you have suggested, to make curries. The low-washable starch adds a mild thickness; think of its purpose as similar to a light roux in soups.
This is a fascinating topic you have written about.