Thai Jasmine rice recipe?

sexki11en

Hi all, SK's OH here (get me with the lingo!) with a question about my favourite topic - food!

I'm a huge fan of Thai food and recently, thanks to all you lovely people, we've been doing much more cooking from scratch. We've got the curries and other main dishes sorted (kinda) but we can't for the life of us work out how to do rice like they do in restaurants.

We've got the Thai Jasmine rice, but it never tastes the same. The restaurant stuff is always somehow tastier, sweeter somewhat.

Any ideas how they do it???

SK's OH

sexki11en

Bumpity bump

SK x

tryingtoruletheworld

I think they steam Jasmine rice quite a lot in thai restaurants, which is a gentler way of cooking, allowing the rice to keep more of its flavour rather than being boiled away.

hth

Adam_Kadmon

I cooked in Thai restaurants for a few years, and cooking the rice was my job. We cooked it in a rice cooker. You put rice into the rice cooker crock up to your the knuckle nearest the nail on your index finger. You pour in plenty of cold water and swill it around. Pour off the milky water and repeat. Put in enough water to cover the rice to the same depth again (your knuckle), making sure the rice is evenly spread - NO SALT - and put it in the cooker. That's it.

Sometimes we would mix the Jasmine rice 50-50 with American long-grain because it was cheaper. No-one ever noticed, because it was the cooking they noticed. Salt will make it tough, and if it isn't washed, it will be sticky. The rice cooker brings it just to the boil over about eight minutes, then turns it down to very low heat for another fifteen or so. Then you give it a stir and let it sit with the lid on for another ten minutes - that's what people mean when they say they steam it.

I manage it in a pan at home, but then, I've had a lot of practice. It's easy to overheat it so it boils over and you lose the moisture. Fundamentally, you'll never make rice as well as someone who's cooked and eaten it every day of their life, and was taught by someone who did the same.