Rice

viv0147

Hi could someone advise me on the best rice that would compliment a Chinese meal also the best rice for an Indian meal if there is any difference. Thanks

Steve059

Plain boiled rice goes with both. I use Basmati, as it's the best all purpose rice. It cooks quicker than brown rice, it is more fragrant (it’s Hindi for fragrant) than brown rice or long grain rice and it also holds together during cooking.

The trick to cooking perfect boiled rice is to use twice as much water by volume as rice. Per person, I use 75g of rice (approx. 100ml by volume) and 200ml of water.

You can make this into Yellow Rice by adding 1/4 of a teaspoon per portion of ground turmeric.

BitterAndTwisted

For Chinese cookery any old white long-grain rice will do. For authentic and fragrant rice for Indian cooking it's basmati if you're having it plain, for biryani or dishes like that I doubt it would make much difference which you used

j.e.j.

Jasmine rice is lovely with oriental dishes, and maybe pilau or basmati for the Indian. But as the others have said, plain rice would do fine for either dishes.

viv0147

Thank you very much for your replies the information provided will be of great use to me.

zippychick

I make Goks Egg fried rice regularly- making it tonight (with spicy cucumber salad and garlic chicken). He suggests you cook the rice in advance and refridgerate overnight. I cook plain basmati rice with no salt as we have a sack of basmati. Rinse well and add twice the volume of water so for 400g rice, add 800ml boiling water. Bring to 2-3 heat immediately, place the lid on for ten mins. Then remove from heat and leave in the pot 5 mins. Cool and refridgerate (or freeze) I make it for a veggie so omit the fishy bit in the EGG Fried rice recipe.

For indian food, you can't beat this recipe for pilau rice which i have been making for years. It tastes better reheated in the microwave rather than from cooked fresh.

Pilau Rice

2 cups Basmati rice
1 tbsp ghee or oil
1 tbsp finely chopped onion
6 green cardamons
2" cinnamon stick
4 cloves
2 bay leaves
3 cups cold water
1/2 tsp salt
red & yellow food colour (optional)


* Pre-heat oven to 160C/Gas 3 and wash rice in several changes of water - drain well.

* Fry onion, cardamons, cinnamon stick and cloves in ghee/oil for a couple of minutes till soft.

* Add the drained rice and fry for a further minute or two.

* Add cold water to rice and bring to the boil, then put lid on and leave to simmer on low for 5 minutes.

* Give gentle stir with fork so not to break rice then replace lid and simmer for 3 minutes. Repeat and cover for further 2 minutes.

* Remove from heat then sprinkle few drops (or pinch if using powder) food colouring onto rice.

* Replace lid and put in oven for 15-20 minutes to finish cooking and set colours. (Time to prepare and cook curry then!)

* Stir with fork before turning out onto serving plate to distribute colours, and voila! ... the perfect pilau rice




Edit:- These recipes are closely based on those in this book:-

Title: The Curry Secret : Indian Restaurant Cookery at Home

Author: Kris Dhillon

ISBN-10: 0716020548
ISBN-13: 978-0716020547

The pilau rice freezes fantastically as well.

Zip

zippychick

Goks recipe

sonastin

At christmas, I overhead my aunt (a fabulous cook) telling my mum that she always does half&half basmati and long grain. In the confusion of trying to serve up the buffet, I didn't get chance to ask her about why but I recently tried it anyway on the basis that OH claims basmati tastes better but long grain is significantly cheaper. It was my most successful attempt at cooking rice to date!

(probably best to add, I don't really like rice so never learnt to cook it. OH loves it but isn't very good at cooking it himself. I've just started experimenting with the boiling-it-dry method rather than trying to drain/rinse it and it seems to be working too!)

ShowMeTheDeal

It is not what they say in the cook books but I find long grain rice is the best. Not too starchy and doesn't stick together.