I’ve actually wanted to write about white rice for some time now and since the last post was about eating eat, let’s talk about eating in. When we eat in around here, one of my favorite things to cook with is
White Rice for more than just the delicious taste.
Preparation
White rice is crazy easy to prepare. We have an awesome rice cooker made by
Zojirushi and it’ll cook any kind of rice you throw at it. We can even make sushi rice for rolling our own sushi in this baby. Preparing white rice in general, we wash it (not necessary for all kinds of white rice. Something like this
Quick White Rice wouldn’t need washing) then throw it in the rice cooker, then fill up to the label marked inside the rice cooker for the type of rice we’re using. Hit the button for that type of rice and wait, it’ll finish perfectly. Every time.
For more complicated white rice recipes we use this
Cook book. It really is the ultimate, it has everything in it we’d ever want to make at home including fancy risotto which tastes awesome. The cookbook covers a variety of rice types and grain lengths but has plenty of recipes for white rice.
If you don’t have a rice cooker, you can do it on the stove which isn’t too tough either (just google White rice on the stove) or even in the microwave.
Versatility
Rice itself can take on just about any flavor you put to it. It’ll taste like lemon if you put lemon in it, butter, herbs, whatever you feel like. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a super food, you can make it be anything you want. Rice does have it’s own flavor if you choose to eat it that way as well, which I find delightful. A very clean flavor.
But aside from simply flavoring the rice with different things, rice can be used as a filler or flare to another dish. We use it in oat meal, ground hamburger dishes to make the meat more filling, anything with eggs, mixed with veggies, and the list goes on.
I love cooking with rice!
General Expiration
Another great property of rice is that it’s very easy to pack and save for later. If you happen to make too much plain white rice, throw it in a ziplock and put it in the freezer. It can keep for ages and when thawed properly (add a touch of water, put in the microwave with a loose cover) it’ll taste almost as fresh as when it went into the freezer.
It can be added to dishes frozen and as it thaws, it’ll take on the flavor of the dish and again taste great.
When stored in the fridge, expiration will vary but I’ve used rice up to two weeks later, in other dishes and it still tasted great.
On the shelf, dry and packaged correctly, rice can last up to 30 years without losing any flavor or nutrition!
Rice. If you’re not eating it, give it a try. It’ll blow your mind.
Melissa Batai
Melissa, a mom to three little ones (ages 7, 3 and 1), blogs at both Mom’s Plans where she writes about living a fulfilling life on less and paying down debt, and Fiscal Phoenix where she writes about rising from the ashes of your financial mistakes.
