Tell me the details like what makes yours perfect, why, and your cultural influence if any. I mean, rice is totally different with Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Persian food just to name a few. It is not just the spices or sauces I’m mostly interested in. These matter too. I am really interested in the grain variety and specifically how you prep, cook, and absolutely anything you do after. Don’t skip the cultural details that you might otherwise presume everyone does. Do you know why some brand or region produces better ingredients, say so. I know it seems simple and mundane but it really is not. I want to master your rice as you make it in your culture. Please tell me how.
So, how do you do rice?
Oh hell yeah my time to shine,
I make a large quntity of fried rice once every 3 or 4 days, then portion it out for multiple meals.
Fried rice needs to be day old rice+.
So first off, I use a rice cooker. It was $5 at a thrift store, and I have 3 different types all the same price. they all do the same quality. I take 3 cups of raw rice, rinse it off, and fill the water up a half inch over the rice level. I add beef bouillon, a healthy amount of garlic powder, onion powder, msg, and pepper. Mix into the water as well as you can.
Let the rice cook, don’t take the lid off once it starts. then let it sit in the fridge at least over night.
Then the next day, I cut up bacon into small bits, and cook it in my wok. Depending on how healthy I’m feeling, I either cook it until the fat is gone then drain the fat, or cook it until it’s still soft but cooked thoroughly. Put the bacon on a paper plate with a paper towel on it to soak up extra fat, then in the wok (if you drained the fat put in oil) scramble some eggs in the bacon fat. Once it’s scrambled, put in the rice and the bacon, cook it until it starts to seem 70% cooked. If it starts to stick put in cooking oil or butter depending on preference. Then I mix in two bags of 12oz mixed frozen vegetables. When those are thawed but not cooked, generously pour in soy sauce, more garlic powder, onion powder, and msg. Done!serve in a bowl and around here they sell bottles labeled ‘yumyum sauce,’ top with that and mix in. Otherwise mix up some spicy mayo with teriyaki sauce and use that
Thanks for sharing. You’re doing some things differently than me. I make close to a week’s food at once with a bunch of meat, veggies, and rice all in the oven at the same time. It is budget friendly, relatively low effort, and healthy. I’ve been playing around with how I do the rice. This is the real reason for my post here. I’m looking for the different techniques that alter the final texture. I think I have a good grasp of that now. The main factors are presoaking, briefly sautéing the dry rice before cooking, the extent that the rice is washed of starch dust before cooking, the timing of when the water is fully evaporated, the total cooking time, and if the rice is fluffed after cooking.
From my own fried rice experiments, slightly undercooking rice intended for fried rice, along with slightly less water, and then cooking a bit longer with a bit more water during the fried rice stage, will result in a slightly nutty flavor and texture that can be interesting, at least with Jasmine rice. I often also add a package of quick microwave brown rice which is like 1:5 of my Jasmine from the oven. This improves overall texture too.
I typically fry with the pan stock left over from cooking whatever meat of the week I have and that meat goes in as well. I mostly use the same veggies I made for the week but chop up the cooked stalks from broccoli as the main vegetable. I start with fresh diced garlic, ginger, and green onions and don’t use any other spices. I do a couple of watered down eggs quickly sloshed around a hot wok to cook a thin layer just before adding my rice and the fry I made and removed before the eggs. I typically add enough soy sauce to easily unstick any egg that remains.
Your idea of adding an extra sauce is completely new to me. Spicy mayo and teriyaki sauces mixed sounds terrifyingly fascinating.