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Nutritionally the polishing is unfortunate because it removes the most valuable part of the
grain. People on polished white rice diets become ill and may die of malnutrition. Feeding them
the bran of the rice or some other form of vitamin B1 that the bran contains, restores them into
full health.
Rice for non-cooks
What about converted and instant rice?
To make converted (also called parboiled rice), the processors uses steam or boiling
water over brown rice for a brief period before the milling process. This gelatinizes the starch in
the rice grain. Then they dry and mill the rice the usual way as for white rice, ending in polished
converted white rice.
Converted rice is more nutritious than polished white rice and was developed for people
who rely on rice as a staple diet. This is because gelatinizing the thin outer layer of the rice
makes some of the vitamin B complex adhere to the grain itself instead of to the bran, keeping
more of it intact during polishing. International organizations introduced converted rice
successfully to Africa and the West Indies, but people of Southeast Asia and the Philippines
flatly rejected it. Since the standard diet in the Western Hemisphere is much more varied and
people don't usually rely on just one or two foods as staples, the use of the more nutritious
converted rice is not so critical in North America. It has a long storage life because the heat in
the parboiling process inactivates the enzyme that plays part in turning the rice rancid. Converted
rice takes longer to cook than regular rice and has a pasty, somewhat sticky texture.
Then there is quick or instant rice (we know it by its household brand name, Minute
Rice) for those who absolutely refuse to cook rice. Most of us cooks started off with instant rice
and some stayed with it.
To produce quick rice, processors soaks the milled grains, then cook them until they are
almost completely soft. Then they cool, freeze, thaw and finally dehydrate it. This gives a
product that timid cooks can reconstitute in hot water, and place it on the table in five minutes.
Its convenience is its only attribute. The relative cost is high, and its flavor and consistency don't
compare well with regular white rice.
The most common rice varieties
Long and short-grain rice are two of the most commonly used varieties. The names
describe the shape of the grains—long-grain rice is long and skinny while short-grain rice is
short and fat. But there's another major difference between these two varieties. Short-grain rice
contains much more of the starch, that makes the grains stickier, allowing them to clump
together. Long-grain rice, with significantly less starch, cooks into drier, non-sticking grains.
Two kinds of starch are a major constituent in any rice: amylopectin and amylose. If you
want to cook good rice, you need to know the relative amounts of each in the kind you are using.
It determines the texture and feel of the cooked rice on your plate. The higher the relative
amylopectin content of the rice, the stickier and more clinging the grains are. If you eat with
chopsticks, a sticky rice with high amylopectin content is what you want so a good-size clump
stays on the chopsticks.
Pakistanis, Indians and other nearby nations eat with their fingers, so the stickiness of rice
is not important to them. They prefer the low-amylopectin long-grain rice that cooks into
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