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prevent scorching and bitter taste. Toasting for 3 to 5 minutes should do.
When cooked rice cools, it hardens. The long amylose starch molecules on cooling form
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a somewhat orderly structure from the random mess they are in when still hot. Because of this
partial order, the molecules hold on to each other more firmly and the rice grains stiffen. So what
does that mean to cooks? If you need to add ingredients to rice that you plan to serve cold, add
those while the rice is still warm and soft. Once the grains stiffen, it is harder to uniformly stir in
ingredients, and you disrupt the orderly rice grains.
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If you have very hard water, you may not be able to keep your rice snow-white. Acidify
your cooking water with one teaspoon vinegar for every cup of raw rice you use, and your rice
remains pure white.
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Extra cooked rice keeps well in the refrigerator for several days and at least six months
in the freezer. If you have the storage space, plan to cook extra. Here are several good ways to
reheat leftover rice: steam in a steamer for a few minutes; cook slowly for 4 to 5 minutes in a pot
with 2 tablespoons of water for every cup of rice; heat covered on high in the microwave, one
minute for every cup of rice. You may reheat frozen rice the same way, but allow a little extra
time.
WILD RICE
Wild rice, a distant cousin of rice, has a flavor, in many gourmets' opinion, that equals or
surpasses the best basmati rice. Yet, it is sadly neglected on menus. The reason may be tradition
as well as its higher price. In the past, food packagers blended wild rice with white or brown rice
for appeal and to round out flavors, particularly in stuffing. Wild rice appeared sparingly in these
blends, not much more than embellishment. The reason was price which, up the 1990s, was
rather high. A package of pure wild rice most often ended up on pantry shelves when received as
a lavish gift and, cooks measured it out by tablespoons instead of cups. In the past a pound (half
a kilo) of wild rice cost as much as a pound (half a kilo) of best beef tenderloin, rather costly for
a weekday side dish.
With the introduction of large-scale commercial wild rice growing in the U.S. in the early
1990s, the price dropped drastically to half or third until it became quite affordable. Perhaps
today's cooks still consider wild rice a luxury food, or it simply has not been "discovered" yet,
but its use in mainstream cooking is minimal. In such cuisines as Oriental and Indian, centuries
of tradition ingrained white rice as the only rice acceptable. The wild rice industry has engaged
slick marketing techniques to rock this tradition and persuade people to add a little of their
product to the daily pot of rice, but without success. Asian, African and Latin American rice
eaters simply will not consider it. They don’t think wild rice is rice. And in that, they are correct.
Where it comes from
Wild rice is an aquatic fresh-water grass native to the Great Lakes region of North
America. It gradually and naturally spread to the Northeastern U.S. and Eastern Canada along
fresh-waterways. There are four slightly different wild rice species that all belong to the genus
Zizania.
Native American Indians harvested wild rice for over 1000 years using a simple
technique of paddling into areas with naturally growth, bending the grain-rich ripe grass stems
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