This Method Has Changed the Way I Make Rice

I don't know about you but one of my favorite things in cooking is when a concept can be broken down into a simple easy to follow formula so that basically by learning one method you can create an infinite number of dishes and all you have to do is switch out a few ingredients in fact the formula we're going to talk about today which you can use to create an infinite number of spiced rice dishes can be broken down into just three basic stages building flavor cooking and finishing so if we look at the way a beginner might cook rice it's often just a matter of combining water rice and maybe some salt and then cooking it and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that I mean in some cases that plain rice might actually be what you want but when we want rice that can stand on its own a bit more we can add just a few more steps to the process and in doing so we can make our rice infinitely more interesting and open the door to so much more variety and it all starts with the first stage which I like to call building flavor so in our beginner rice making process this step doesn't exist the beginner starts out just by adding the rice and water to the pot and so the only flavor they have is the flavor from the rice itself so if we really we want to take our rice to the next level this is where we'll start essentially rather than adding the rice and water straight to the pot we're going to start by creating a rich flavorful base that we can build everything else on top of and we'll do that by first heating a small amount of fat in a pot over about a medium heat now this can be any type of fat so you can use olive oil if you're making a Mediterranean rice dish butter or ghee if you're making an Indian dish or a neutral oil if you're making a Mexican rice dish for example and if you're not sure which types of fat go well with which Cuisines the book Salt Fat acid heat has a great diagram showing exactly that so that's my go-to resource when I need a little reminder but when in doubt I just use a neutral tasting oil because I know it's not going to clash with any of the other flavors I use either way from there we'll just add some aromatics and or veggies along with a pinch of salt and honestly about 90 of the time I just use onion here it's easy it adds a lot of flavor and it'll work well in pretty much any rice dish but you could also add some garlic ginger or even things like carrots and bell peppers if you like so again just like with the fat try to use ingredients that play well with whatever every Cuisine you're making now aside from which ingredients you use you can also play around with how thoroughly you cook those ingredients specifically with onions whether you cook them for one minute 5 minutes 10 15 or even longer can have a pretty big impact on the flavor of your dish and speaking of flavor let's talk about fat namely why do we need to start with fat in the first place well I'm glad you asked basically fat is an extremely efficient carrier of flavor much more so than water or any other liquid that would be cooking our rice in and to prove it here's a quick little experiment that you can perform at home first cook a spice of your choosing in a neutral oil for about 30 seconds in this case I'm using Aleppo pepper then cook that same spice and water for 30 seconds then strain out each of the liquids and give them a taste of course after waiting for them to cool and you'll see that the oil carries a lot more of the original flavor of the spice whereas the water just tastes sort of like a weak spicy tea and that's because number one the flavor compounds within spices and herbs are fat soluble so the fat does a great job of absorbing and holding on to those flavors now for alliums like garlic and onion those flavors are actually water soluble so you won't see quite as big of a difference there but the other advantage of fat is that it also coats your tongue a lot more effectively than water so that leads to a much better mouth feel and a much better overall flavor so starting with even just a small amount of oil and then infusing some flavor into that oil will have a huge impact on the final flavor of your dish but anyways once you've cooked down the aromatics to your liking it's time to add some spices and this is where you can really shape the flavor of your dish at this point we can turn it into an Indian style rice by adding some cumin cardamom cloves and cinnamon a middle eastern style rice by adding some cumin paprika turmeric and bay leaf or you can even add something as simple as a pinch of cinnamon and some black pepper like I did in the Lebanese rice from last week's video and even something that small will go a surprisingly Long Way due to the flavor carrying power of our oil so I will leave a few of my favorite spice combos in the description below but really this is the fun part so you can just experiment and see what you like best and the book Salt Fat acid heat has another nice diagram for spices along with one for acids which for copyright reasons I probably shouldn't keep showing but I think it's an essential book for beginning home Cooks so I definitely recommend you check it out of course I'll leave a link in the description below anyways now we'll just want to toast the spices for about 30 seconds to give the flavors some more time to infuse into the oil and at that point we can finally add the rice now my last tip in this first flavor building phase is to toast the rice for about 30 seconds being sure to stir that entire time so this number one adds a bit of toasty flavor to the rice but it also just allows the rice to become thoroughly coated in the spices and the flavorful oil then after those 30 seconds we can finally add the liquid at which point we've officially started the cooking phase and this cooking phase is the easiest part because you can really just cook the rice as you normally would so I'll show you how I like to do it but before we get into that let's talk about types of rice and apparently there's over 100 000 varieties of rice in the world but for the most part they can all be broken down into one of three basic categories short grain medium grain and long grain and for this formula we're discussing today long grain rice works best it's light and fluffy when cooked since the grains tend to remain more separate and it's a very fragrant right ice that takes well to the addition of spices now medium grain rice is more moist and tender than long grain and it's also slightly clingy so it lends itself well to cream your dishes like risotto and then short grain rice is the softest and stickiest of them all so that's typically used in sushi and other applications where you want the rice to cling to itself in masses but as far as long grain rice the two most common varieties you'll see are Jasmine and Basmati and that's for good reason they're both very aromatic and delicious rice varieties but where Jasmine rice is native to Thailand and tends to be a bit moist and clingy basmati rice is native to India and it tends to be more fluffy and delicate and it has even longer grains than jasmine rice so for those reasons I think basmati rice works best in this dish but Jasmine or any other long grain rice would work fine as well so now that we've selected our rice let's talk about how to actually cook it and in my opinion the key to making great rice is simply to use the proper ratio of rice to liquid so if you take away just one thing from this video that should be it so many people use too much liquid when they cook rice and that often leads to a mush she and clumpy final product so for long grain rice which actually requires the most liquid out of any type of rice you only want to use about one and a quarter to one and a half Parts liquid for every one part of rice any higher than that and your rice will just end up overly mushy and Bloated now with that said you may have also noticed that I'm talking in terms of liquid and not water and that's because while you can use water to cook your rice you certainly don't have to and in fact for this formula I would encourage using something more flavorful like a chicken stock if you have chicken stock on hand or even just bouillon cubes which you can use to make a sort of makeshift chicken stock it requires almost no extra effort to just use that in place of water and it's going to make your rice a lot more interesting and more flavorful just note that if your stock already has salt in it you want to be careful not to add too much salt in other parts of the process so enough of that how do we actually cook the rice well it can depends slightly on which type of rice you're using but generally most long grain Rices where you want to end up with a light and fluffy final product are going to follow the same process so here's how I do it first I'll add my liquid and then bring the pie add up to a boil then I'll stir and reduce the heat to low and then cover the pot and allow it to simmer for 15 to 18 minutes after that time I'll remove the pot from the Heat and let it steam still covered for another five minutes after which point I'll just fluff the rice with a fork or a spoon and then taste and adjust for seasoning as necessary but we're not done yet because we still have to talk about the finishing stage and basically what this stage consists of is adding a few extra ingredients to add some additional flavor and Pizzazz to your rice so the stage is technically optional but it can make a huge difference so I highly recommend it in most cases and when it comes to these add-ins you basically have three main options the first is fat now of course we added fat at the beginning of the process but by adding a little bit more of the same type of fat here at the end we can give the rice a nice smooth glossy texture which is going to improve the mouth feel and make it that much more delicious now the next thing we can add is acid now again you have a variety of choices here so you can go with lime juice lemon juice vinegar and so on but the point is that adding a little bit of acid here at the end is going to give that Rice just a little bit a Zing to take it to the next level now I don't always add acid to my rice but it really just depends on what I'm serving it with so for example if I'm serving it with chicken in a yogurt sauce I may not add acid to the rice because the yogurt sauce is already going to provide that zinc whereas if the rice is more of a main component of the dish for example in a pilaf I will add some acid to it so that the rice can stand on its own a bit more now the next things you may want to add in are some fresh herbs and or some toasted nuts and seeds in my opinion nearly any rice dish can benefit from the addition of chopped herbs for some extra freshness and depending on the dish some toasted nuts and seeds can be great as well just to vary up the textures a bit and make your rice a lot more interesting for example in the Lebanese rice that I made in last week's video toasted almonds are a great addition so if you haven't seen that video yet I recommend you check it out right here it's a pretty simple application of this method so it's a great place to start either way thanks a lot for watching and I'll talk to you in that next video

Channel: Charlie Anderson

Views: 1,151,363

Keywords: How to cook, how to become a better cook, how to become a better home cook, how to cok

Id: VElbm2CmNJE

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 19 2022