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Re: Marinated Grilled Chicken
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Rice Rocks
Forms and Varieties of Rice
Oh the joys of rice. It’s one of the few foods in the world which is entirely non-allergenic. It also gluten free, fat free, cholesterol free and sodium free.
Rice can be cooked whole and served with stir-fries, sauces, and curries, or made into flour, wine, cakes, vinegar, milk, flakes, noodles, paper and tea.
There are also a few varieties of rice (which is classified primarily by the size of its grain). So you have lots of cooking options.
Long-grain rice is long and slender. The grains stay separate and fluffy after cooking, so this is the best choice if you want to serve rice as a side dish, or as a bed for sauces.
Medium-grain rice is shorter and plumper, and works well in paella and risotto.
Short-grain rice is almost round, with moist grains that stick together when cooked. It's the best choice for rice pudding and molded salads.
Spanish rice for paella, glutinous rice for sushi and rice balls, and risotto rice for risotto. Most varieties are sold as either brown or white rice, depending upon how they are milled.
Brown rice retains the bran that surrounds the kernel, making it chewier, nuttier, and richer in nutrients. Brown rice takes about twice as long to cook as white rice.
White rice lacks the bran and germ, but is more tender and delicate. It's less nutritious than brown rice, but you can partially compensate for that by getting enriched white rice.
Converted rice is beige. It tastes a lot like white rice, but it has more nutrients. Instant rice is white rice that's been precooked and dehydrated. It's convenient, but expensive and bland.
A few rice facts:
- More than two-thirds of the world rely on the nutritional benefits of rice.
- Rice is the most important food crop in Asia.
- The first cultivators of rice in America did so by accident after a storm damaged ship docked in the Charleston South Carolina harbor. The captain of the ship handed over a small bag of rice to a local planter as a gift, and by 1726, Charleston was exporting more than 4,000 tons of rice a year.
- In Burma a person eats 500 pounds of rice a year, an astonishing figure when it is reduced to a daily consumption of 1-1/4 pounds per day.
- The United States has always been more of a rice exporter than a rice consumer.
