The Ultimate Rice Cooker (14 page)

Here are some tips for preparing rice and grain mixes in the rice cooker:

When using a medium (6-cup) rice cooker, use the
same
_amount
of water called for on the package. In a small rice cooker (2- to 4-cup), start with ¼ cup
less
liquid; in a large cooker (10-cup), start with ¼ cup
more
liquid.

Put the water, rice, any butter or oil, and any seasonings from a separate packet into the rice cooker bowl. Program for the regular or Quick Cook cycle, remembering to let the rice steam for 15 minutes on the Keep Warm cycle before fluffing it with a wooden or plastic rice paddle or a wooden spoon. Some mixes (like Rice-A-Roni) call for adding the seasonings at the end of the cooking instead of the beginning; do this by stirring them in when the cooker shuts off or switches to Keep Warm.

If the resulting product is too chewy, add ¼ cup more water next time; if it is too wet for your taste, use ¼ cup less water next time. Keep a record of what works best for your favorite mixes. (If your rice cooker has a Keep Warm cycle, you can fix chewy rice on the spot. Just sprinkle the additional water over the rice, close the cover, and let the rice stay on Keep Warm for about 15 minutes more while the water is absorbed. Fluff the rice, then serve.)

If the mix you have selected has a sautéing step (like Rice-A-Roni), you can do this right in the rice cooker. Program the cooker for the regular or Quick Cook program and add the specified amount of butter or oil. When the butter is melted or the oil is hot, add the rice and sauté as directed on the package. Then add the liquid and allow the cooking cycle to complete as usual.

To cook two rice mixes at the same time, you will not need to quite double the water. Use ¼ cup less water for the second mix.

As noted above, cook risotto mixes on the Porridge cycle only. You may need an additional ¼ cup water to achieve the desired degree of creaminess.

THE LUNDBERG FAMILY RICE FARM

Throughout this book you will see references to Lundberg rices. Lund berg Family Farms is situated in the northern Central Valley of California, smack-dab in the center of rice country in the shadow of Sutter Buttes. California is known for its remarkable rice crop yields, 25 percent higher than in any of the southern states, and Lundberg is the living proof of this; it operates on a relatively small total acreage of rice-growing land and produces a staggering amount of really good, consistently dependable rice. Still family owned and operated, the company sells some of the best tasting, and most diverse, rices in the country.

The company started in the late 1960s by selling 50-pound bags of their Natural Short-Grain Brown Rice off the back of a flatbed truck parked on the side of the road under the label of Wehah Farms (a combination of initials of the four brothers, Harlan, Weldon, Homer, Eldon, with their father). This same nutra-farmed short-grain brown rice is still their best seller today, along with their delicious long-grain brown rice. The brown rices are also available organically grown.

Harlan Lundberg is known for dabbling in exotic rices and has taken many rice- tasting trips to India. Obtaining seed of an Indian red rice from the seed bank in Aberdeen, Idaho (where 30,000 varieties of rice can sit waiting to be adopted for up to 20 years under refrigeration), he set to perfecting the rice marketed today as Wehani, an offshoot of the original farm name. He then went on to create the Black Japonica using parent stock from the Rice Research Station in Biggs, California, a seed bank owned by the California rice producers. His latest project is a speckled rice, still known as SP2, that looks like a pinto bean, a tasty red rice crossed with domestic southern long-grain. We can’t wait to try it.

ORGANIC RICE AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES

At this writing, there is no federal standard for organic rice. But there are several nonprofit and private organizations that certify rice, such as the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). They have strict requirements and the public has learned to trust and respect their logos on organic products. The number of acres devoted to organic rice in the United States is very small in proportion to the number devoted to regular rice-growing practices, but is steadily growing. The field yields for organic rice are small and unpredictable, due to damage by insects and weeds, and average about half those of conventionally grown rice. Unless an artisan rice, most imported rices from Asia or India are not organic.

For rice to be certified organic by organizations such as the CCOF, the field used must be clean of the use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, or any chemicals for three years before being marketed as an organic crop after harvest. Then the crop must be grown, harvested, stored, and milled under organic conditions, which means no nonorganic rice is processed at that facility without stringent cleaning of the equipment and separate storage units. It is very difficult to store organic rice and avoid insect problems without some sort of pesticide control. The final cost of milled organic rice is about three times that of conventional rice, but for purists, this is no deterrent. Since pesticide and fungicide residues would be found in the bran layer, brown rice is the most desirable crop for being organic. Polishing, the process that makes white rice, disposes of the bran layer, leaving the pristine, undisturbed heart of the grain. At our last shopping visit to the Japanese market, there were stacks of 10- and 20pound plastic bags of both long- and medium-grain organic California-grown brown rices, simply labeled as such.

Enter sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture practices growing foods without synthetic chemicals (insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides) and the soil is replenished with nutrients during the growing process. The new references to heirloom grain conservation describe the intentional cultivation and fostering of lesser known varieties of grain suited for human food by private plant breeders and mini-farmers with the goal of maintaining diversity. Having different characteristics than high-yield crops developed for long storage and mechanized harvesting techniques, heirloom crops are products of deliberately cultivated living gardens, often more flavorful and of different coloring and shape. Their gene pool is naturally resistant to disease and has adapted in the framework of a natural evolutionary cycle. These crops are described in terms of nutrition-per-acre rather than yield-per-acre. This is a language and way of looking at food production that will be gaining in acceptance and practice into the twenty-first century.

Despite these obstacles, we will be seeing a lot more delicious, organic rices, both white and brown, in the future, as the demand for untarnished foodstuffs continues to increase. Agricultural reform, in hand with a growing demand for these tasty, smaller yield heirloom grains, has made way for the Grain Revolution to flourish in your home kitchen. Seeds for Change Incan crop specialist Emigdio Ballon of New Mexico says it best: “The earth and the seeds, they represent life.”

JUST ADD WATER ?

Described as one of the chemical protagonists of the cooking process, indeed, water is the most important ingredient in the cooking of rice. It is a general consensus that if your tap water is good enough to drink, it will be good enough to cook with. But many cooks wouldn’t consider using tap water to make their rice. They use bottled or spring water or filtered water systems attached to their tap, since municipal sources and deep wells often contain hard minerals, chlorination, fluoride, or foreign material. Milk, fruit and vegetable juices, beer, wine, meat and vegetable stocks, and coconut milk may all be used as liquid substitutes in recipes, adding food value and a variety of flavor.