Make Perfect Rice Every Time With Sohla | Cooking 101

welcome back in today's episode we're going to talk about

rice

wow oh I'm Sola El we have to do that part hello I'm Sola El and today I'm in the New York Times

cooking

studio and let's go To talk all about

rice

, today alone We are going to do some basic things so that you can establish yourself in the world of rice and it is also another essential ingredient that when you know how to cook rice you can prepare any meal for breakfast. lunch or dinner there are many different types of rice, there are long grains Medium grain rices Short grain rices Long grain rices Rices are usually fluffier the shorter the grain is often stickier, that is not a Strict rule in general This is usually how it works and you will also find brown rice and white rice.

Brown rice is the whole grain, it is completely intact, so it will have the germ and with white rice. The germ and BR are removed and then There are other things to look for in parboiled rice, which means the rice has been partially cooked and dried. What that does is it enhances some nutrients, increases digestibility, and

make

s

cooking

a little more foolproof when the rice is cooked and then dried. It goes through a process called starch retrogradation which

make

s the starch molecules a little tougher and stronger, making the grains fluffy. That's what Uncle Ben is. It is a parboiled rice that is almost impossible to prepare incorrectly.

You can also find enriched rice. It's similar. to enriched flour, where it basically means there are some added vitamins and minerals, the price range for rice can vary a lot and unfortunately with rice you get what you pay for, so high quality rice costs more, but it is a grain, so it's still relatively cheap. Compared to other ingredients, if you are a big fan of rice, I recommend you make this, it lasts forever and there is a big difference between a cheap rice and a slightly more expensive rice, and we are only talking about a couple of dollars a pound if If you eat a lot of white rice, you can actually buy it in bulk.

White rice lasts almost forever as long as you keep it in a cool, dry place. Brown rice doesn't last as long because it has the germ intact and it has these oils in it that will go rancid quickly, that's actually why rice is initially pearled, which is the process of removing the hull and the germ increases the life. useful to practice initially forever. If you have the space, get a big old bag of rice, you will always have rice when I Think about the dangers that can arise when cooking rice. Much of this comes down to overcooked or undercooked rice.

There are a few key steps that will help you avoid this and then even if you mess up the rice, I'm going to show you what to do with that rice so that rice is never wasted. Rice was very important in my culture and we were taught that not even a grain of rice is wasted, so today I am going to show you how. To never waste rice, let's do some fun things with it. Let's collect all this. This bag especially comes home with me. Today we will use white rice and the best thing about white rice is. which cooks pretty quickly, so we'll start by steaming some rice.

This method is most of the

time

known as steaming, but we don't actually steam it. The technical term for this method is absorption method because all the liquid we are adding to the rice will be completely absorbed. This method will work with any type of white rice. The only thing is that depending on the length of the grain, the proportion of water will change, as a rule, shorter grains. Rice works best one to one, so one part rice and one part water. Medium grains work best with one part rice to one and a half parts water and then long grain rice like Basmati works best with two to one, that's a good place to start and then.

Modify maybe you like your rice a little firmer or a little softer, so I like to write my personal favorite ratio on the package to go back to and then if I buy that rice again, I'll write it down. You can select your rice cooking based on your personal specifications and I think it's a lot of fun, so for the simple process of steaming rice we're first going to rinse the rice, then I like to soak it. This is optional, but I'll discuss the details later and then we'll continue. to boil, cover and simmer at the end and rest, simple steps, but let's go over the details to make you like the

perfect

rice cookers.

I know a lot of people swear by one, I think they are wonderful. I personally don't have one because I live in New York and not only do I have limited counter space, but I also have one outlet for the entire apartment. This will also work for a rice cooker. You just don't have it. to control the heat, but you rinse the rice, soak it and add the water exactly the same way and then you just press a button, so if you have a rice cooker, good for you, I'm jealous if you don't. you have a rice cooker and you are making it in a pot, any pot will work, the main thing that matters here is that you have a tight lid, if you don't have a tight lid you can always work your way. first wrapping it wrapping the top with some aluminum foil placing a lid on top my favorite pot to cook rice at home is a small dutch oven that has a very tight lid nothing comes out of it but that's really all i you need Okay, to rinse the rice I like to use a big bowl because you want to get in there and gently stir, you don't want to break up the grains, you want to shake to help moisten each grain and then I'm going to tip.

Take it out and let's repeat that when you rinse the rice, you remove a lot of those scraped exterior starches so that when you cook the rice it's not all lumpy and you don't have to worry about getting all the water out. Keep this point in mind because we are going to keep rinsing and then it will soak when it grows. I was always told a minimum of three

time

s. I don't know why three is the lucky number, but I was always told a minimum of three times. and you want to rinse until the water runs almost clear, it will never be completely clear, but you just want it to be clear enough that when you put your hand in there you can see it.

I like to soak my rice in cold water. for about 15 minutes to 2 hours, this is not a required step, especially for medium and short grain rices, and the soaking step is especially essential for longer grain rices because it prevents the grain from breaking down. It cooks much more evenly and you end up with like a longer, more beautiful,

perfect

grain of Basmati, doing the little soaking makes a big difference and makes your rice a little more foolproof. My rice is soaked and I'm going to drain it once you've soaked it, you want to be a little bit. gentler on it because it's more likely to break down at this point so here I have my two cups of jasmine rice that I'm going to add water to and adding salt is optional so if you're going to eat your rice with something really tasty like a curry.

I don't season my rice, there will be enough flavor coming from whatever you are going to serve, but if I am going to eat my rice with just an egg, I would season it. I grew up. We chose rice that would never have had salt in it because we had it with very tasty things, so I'm not going to salt it and we'll start by bringing it to a boil over medium high heat, I'll just give it like a stir occasionally when it boils just to make sure it gets hot right. evenly and I like to do this covered so we can lose as little water as possible, so once it boils I'll turn it down to the lowest setting and at that point you don't stir, you don't look, you set a timer and trust that It's doing its job, if you go in there in the middle of cooking and take the lid off, you're going to lose too much Steam and it's not going to cook properly and then once we open it up we're going to look for some status signals to determine what to do next. .

We're going to fix some problems with the rice, so I set a timer for 15 minutes. we're 20 seconds away, I haven't peaked so let's look at it, we're going to go in with the fork, fluff it up and you want to make sure that your beans are tender and there's no water left in the bottom of the pot so if you go in there to fluff and you notice that you have a little water left in the bottom of the pot and the rice is not tender yet, cover it again, put it on low heat and let it cook for another 5 minutes. and check it again if you notice there is a little water at the bottom of the pot and the grains are cooked through, just uncover it and let it simmer for 5 minutes to remove excess moisture and let's say you uncover it, it's dry and It's undercooked, just take it like the back of a wooden spoon, make a small hole right in the middle and pour it in like a tablespoon of warm water, you don't need much, cover it and let it simmer for 5 minutes. check it again, we just need it to be really nice and steamy, a lot of times your rice is a little spoiled and you can take it all the way with a few adjustments, but if it's perfect and tender and there's no liquid in it.

At the bottom just cover it and let it sit. The rest phase is very important. When you let it sit, the kernels will harden and become distinct and any excess moisture will be absorbed. Okay, so next we'll talk about how to make a peeloff A peeloff can be many things and is found in many different cultures, often with different names peof is like the French word, but anyone who eats rice has their version of peeloff, so What a peeloff essentially means is that you're going to take grains, roast them in a little bit of fat and then add a liquid and cook them.

Hulls can be made from any grain, just like with the steam absorption method, this is a great place to simply improve the flavor by changing what you cook. so I'm going to cook this in water, but you can make broth or Dashi or any type of broth, make a mixture of water and tomato pada or maybe water and coconut milk. This is like the most basic, the most essential shell. off, but then you can be very creative and change it however you want. First step. I'm just going to toast the beans in a little bit of butter.

I already rinsed and soaked the rice, so we'll start exactly the same way. like we do with steamed rice, so it's actually a celus, which means it's parboiled. The best thing about Cella busman is that it can handle a longer cooking time, so this is a great place to start the peeling process because it is very forgiving. rice now, when you first add the rice, it will sound very moist, and you will want to cook it until it starts to sound more sizzling so you know that you have removed a lot of the excess moisture and we are looking like a nice piece of toast, so be very careful when mixing it, but keep it moving quite frequently so that each grain of rice can have some time in that fat, so I'm on medium heat.

I'm going to keep stirring and pulling and we're hearing the sizzle and we're also going for the smell, so you want to go until it smells a little more nutty, almost like popcorn. The vibe will make it taste more aromatic, much tastier, and most importantly, it deactivates a lot of those surface starches that keep it from getting too clumpy, so we end up with a very spongy shell in the end, so this step Drying is really what makes the peel come off in a way that I love to do. At home I'll cook this with bone broth instead of water and then it increases the nutrition and then while it's sitting there's still a lot of heat coming out and I'll just add a little bit quick. cook vegetables like a pile on spinach, cover them, they will wilt from the heat and that's all you need, that's dinner, okay, so let's listen to it for a second, the sound is a little high-pitched and pointy, you know what I mean and that's how you know the moisture has evaporated and we're done with drying okay so now I'm going to add my water exactly like when you steam rice we're going to bring it to a boil turn the heat down to low lid. and let it do its job, so longer grain busatti rice, larger volume of water needs a little more salt to peel, unlike steamed rice, I always add salt, so we'll bring it to a boil to I like to take the cooking time for the shell. 18 minutes.

I know it's very specific instead of 15. A lot of people give you a range, but I think you should find a time that works for your stove and stick to it because when you open it and move it, it does. worse, so I think it needs a little more time because we have roasted it so that the grains are a little more resistant, they need a little more time to cook, we are going to bring it to a vigorous boil. I'll stir it to make sure it's boiling all the way through the lid, turn it down too low and it will steam for 18 minutes.

Let's find out, look for those same signs of cooking when steamed rice has any liquid in it. At the bottom you have the well cooked kernel, if

every

thing looks good cover it and let it sit for about 15 minutes, you can even let it sit for an hour so it's a great thing to do while you do other things. Rice is a lot. easierthat the pasta because the pasta does not wait for you the pasta does not wait for anyone. The rice can wait for you and it has been sitting for about 15 minutes and now we can see that we have our delicious fluffy, buttery rice.

Look at it, it shines, which is cool. I really like to smell the butter and that's all there is here, so imagine if you add like a little twig of time, or if you add a little bit of turmeric at the beginning, then you get beautiful yellow rice, maybe you could skip a little bit of butter and garlic in your fat and then instead of water, use broth, which is like level two, peel, you want to make it a little crazier, maybe add some vegetables or quick-cooking proteins. like add some shrimp or some peas that are level three, peel them and then you know you want to go even further, cook them like marinated lamb and a bunch of spices and that's like a super fancy peeling so play around with this but this That's a good place to start, so now let's make some fried rice.

This is perfect to make when you have some leftover rice in the refrigerator. In fact, it is better if the rice is prepared the day before because when it runs out. in the refrigerator it dries out a little bit, so it will have a perfect texture for fried rice, so there are so many different fried rice, of course,

every

one knows China, but even there there are so many different fried rice, there is fried rice. where I'm from Bangladesh, where we make it with turmeric and shallots, there is fried rice in Latin America, everywhere there is rice, there is fried rice, so this is not the best fried rice.

I'm just going to give you a rough guide on how to make fried rice with whatever you have in your refrigerator because this is perfect to make when you don't have anything to eat, that's what we're here for. I want to teach you how to do something with what you have. the basic things you need for your fried rice are: you will need the leftover cooked rice, about a cup, one person is a good starting point, then you will want some aromatics. Here we're going classic, so we've got garlic and ginger chives, we're going to use some diced Deli pastrami as our protein, but use any type of meat, have frozen shrimp or leftover roast chicken or if you want to make some of crumbled tofu or Satan, get creative.

I'm also going to add an egg because I love an egg in my rice, some flavors and some vegetables. Having some frozen vegetables in your freezer will save you. I always keep some mixed greens, some peas and some kale always in my freezer and you will use them. It's a great way to add some vegetables when it's time to prepare a meal, so traditionally many people make fried rice on a hike. My favorite thing to do is make fried rice in a large, well-seasoned cast iron skillet. it will get very hot, cook it very quickly and it will give you that essential fried rice flavor that really comes from cooking it hot and fast, so the reason fried rice is so good with leftover rice is when you put it in the refrigerator .

It goes through this process called starch retrogradation and basically what happens is when you cook the starch and then you cool it, the carbohydrate strands actually harden, they get stronger, they don't just get rancid or dry, there's actually something that changes chemically in rice. What you need to know is that cold leftover rice mixture is fine, fried rice and cooked rice go bad pretty quickly, so warm rice should be stored in the refrigerator as quickly as possible. If you leave it outside for more than 2 hours, there is a danger of it developing. So good bacteria we're going to start by adding a little bit of neutral oil this is going to get quite hot so you don't want to do this with butter or olive oil so we're going to use avocado oil here you want to be generous with the fat so first thing What I'm going to do is cook my protein, it's already cooked, so we're just looking for it to brown so it gets a little bit of color, a little bit of char, there's not really a general ratio of things to the rice.

To follow your heart, the other thing that's important when making fried rice is that it all happens pretty quickly, so you want to make sure you have all your me before you start, ooh, fantastic protein for frying. classic spam rice I also love hot dog fried rice. I almost wanted to make this with a hot dog, but I didn't know if it wasn't good enough for you, but like you, dice some hot dogs and get them nice and crispy. Wow, okay? so we got a nice frizz action on our pastrami. I'm going to pull this out and then we'll move on to our aromatics.

The best thing about cooking the protein first is that we've developed some really tasty honey. At the bottom of the pan we want to make sure it doesn't burn. I'm going to add a little more oil. The important thing with fried rice is that you don't want the pan to dry out and then we go right into our scallions and our garlic and ginger this is going to disappear pretty quickly so it just needs a little bit of heat to bring out the flavors we don't want develop too much color here and once we add our vegetables, it's going to cool the pan so everything smells really nice and aromatic and my scallions have wilted nicely, so now I'm going to add a whole bag of frozen vegetables and it's immediately going to cool the pan. skillet to keep everything from burning and at this point I'm going to season lightly with salt, even though we're going to finish with soy, you still want to season in layers and make sure everything gets a little bit of salt and from this moisture from the vegetables I'm going to scrape that love I really like it when you're cooking something and a little brown crust develops on the bottom of the pan from cooking, that's the tastiest thing, it's like the essence of the flavor, you don't want it to go to waste and instead you want to find ways to scrape it and reincorporate it back into your plate, so here the moisture from the vegetables will help us scrape that delicious Fawn so that it ends up all in our fried rice.

I think it's important to make sure you give it a second to cook out all the moisture, not only are we defrosting it right now, when you hear it it sounds very wet, we'll cook it until that wet sound changes to sizzling, like when we were drying our rice, so while my vegetables continue to cook here, I have a couple of eggs that I already beat with a big pinch of salt, as you learned in the last episode, we always salt our eggs ahead of time. Yes, my pan feels a little. dry again, so we need a little more fat, don't be stingy because there is a lot of rice and we have to make sure that all the rice is well covered with that fat, wait, you hear that, right?

Start now sounds more pointed, right? so now we're going to add our eggs, make a little nest so it doesn't spill everywhere and we're going to pour our eggs right in the middle at this point when I have my vegetables and my mixins and I'm looking at my pastrami and that's when I really decide how much rice am I going to add, so I don't think I'm going to add all that, I think it might be too much, as always. Wait because the last thing you want is for you to take this time to make this really tasty base only to put in too much rice and dilute it completely so that the rice gets in and let's add our pami, let's mix it together.

This happens when you cook a lot at home, you don't want to have to look at a recipe and measure things all the time, you want to follow your instincts and follow your heart, you know this a lot. A lot of times that means just being patient, looking at something, thinking about it before you throw it all in there, like here for me this is the right amount of rice and that means I left a little bit behind and that's okay, that's the way it will be. a snack later, everything is mixed very well and we are going to make our final seasoning with a little soy and sesame oil.

Sesame oil is something you should always add at the end so you don't lose that really nutty flavor. aromatic and we've already seasoned a lot with salt and the pastrami has a lot of flavor so you don't need much to go in and try it, see if it needs anything else when you try it. Don't try it when it's very hot because you won't have a very good idea of ​​what something tastes like, so cool it to the temperature you would actually eat it at and remember that you don't have to prepare it. this fried rice I just hope you have some tips for making your own fried rice, so we went over some basic techniques, but let's say you made a pot of rice and it's not perfect, it's not the end of the world, you can save it "I'm making porridge , so I'm going to show you how to take some rice that's maybe overcooked and mushy, maybe the grains are sticking together too much, whatever it is, you don't want to eat it as it is." I'm going to make a porridge, so here I have a pot of sushi rice, it got too wet, it got too sticky, we're going to divide it into three and I'll show you three really simple ones.

I grew up on something called kti, which was rice that was Sim with a little bit of lentils, so we're going to do a variation of that, but in a lot of places you have kanji, which is like a very simple rice porridge, cooked rice. until it's really nice and tender and then it's topped with some simple things and we're going to make one with an Italian vibe with broo and a little bit of pecino and peas so it's like a risotto for lazy people and the best thing about porridge is that It really stretches the rice so we're going to take this little pot of rice and we're going to turn it into three big pots of oatmeal and it's almost magical how you can serve so many people with such a small amount of rice and I think that's why the Porridge is so important in so many different regions that eat rice.

The first one will be like a very simple kanji. The kanji is pretty bland because it's meant to be some sort of comforting comfort food, so there we are. you're just going to cook this with water you can totally watch it so if you're cooking this and it looks a little thick add more water if you're cooking this and it feels a little thin keep simmering because you can't. overcook it so the second one is loosely based on something I grew up calling gulut, so to this I'm going to add water and some rinsed red lentils and that's going to simmer now, our last rice porridge.

We're going to simmer this with some bone broth. Now we're going to simmer all of this depending on how cooked the rice was to begin with and what type of grain it started with. It will vary over time, but in any place. half an hour to an hour Stir it occasionally because it could burn you want it to simmer vigorously to really break down the rice and then take a look and see what texture you want you know there are some people who like it fine oats and some people like thick oats, it's the same with rice porridge, so add more moisture or uncover and let it simmer and reduce depending on the texture you want for your final porridge.

Okay my porridge has been simmering and you can see it has really transformed so you can see the rice has completely broken down it is very thick and creamy this is the one with lentils so those lentils added extra body and they made it really nice and thick and this is a nice texture for me, but you know, yeah. If you want it thicker you continue cooking it if you want it thinner adjust with water we are going to add a little salt season it it is always good to wait until the end to season because you don't know exactly how much or how little liquid you are going to add, so let's try it, it needs quite a bit of salt because we took that rice that was already unseasoned and then we added a lot of liquid to it that also wasn't seasoned, so you need to take a minute, get the seasoning really good because that's the key to the flavor here, so this is our plain rice with just water, nothing wrong here, you can see it looks quite different from rice with lentils, it's a little less creamy. and it's more of a white tone, this is a good texture for me too and I'm going to keep this one totally mixed because we're going to cover it with some very tasty toppings, so I think it's a good way.

This is the last one, so this is the rice that we simmered in a little bit of bone broth. I also had to add a little water to get it to the right consistency, but you can see that it is really creamy, smooth and tender. one is going to get some extra finishing touches, just using frozen peas. I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with frozen peas, it is something we always have in our freezer and it really often saves the day, sometimes this is the only vegetable in the house. so a little bit of comb, how about a little bit of pepper and a little bit of lemon juice?

So this is like it has rotto vibes, but not at all, not at all, this is not risotto at all, the grains are intact, but you do want the comforting, creamy Italian. Vibes rice, this is a really easy way to get it and save rice that maybe wasn't perfect to begin with and I'm going to try this after my cheese has a chance to melt and incorporate because cheese brings a lot of salt so We don't want to overdo it, you know, every time I add a mixture like this, I wait to season because it will adjust the amount of seasoning that you need and this feels a little thick for me, so I'm going to add a little bit of water.You have to remember that this is on the stove and it's very hot, so once it hits the plate it will thicken a little because it will cool a little.

I'm going to try it now and see how I am with the salt, even though it's unsalted, it's quite tasty because we used bone broth and comb, but I still need a little salt and I'm going to add a little more pepper and I actually think I want to brighten this up a little bit and finish it off with a little bit of lemon juice and then we're going to put them on a plate and add some fun toppings so here I have from that pot of overcooked rice three three amazing delicious porridge this is not It's just a Great way to use up leftover rice, overcooked rice, or spoiled rice.

It's just a great recipe to have in your bank because it's so cheap and you can really use whatever you have in your refrigerator to make it your own, you know? what to do with your leftover rice you know what to do with your bad rice and you know what to do with your just rice and I'll see you next time for more cooking school 101 I don't know the title of the show h