Tell me the details like what makes yours perfect, why, and your cultural influence if any. I mean, rice is totally different with Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Persian food just to name a few. It is not just the spices or sauces I’m mostly interested in. These matter too. I am really interested in the grain variety and specifically how you prep, cook, and absolutely anything you do after. Don’t skip the cultural details that you might otherwise presume everyone does. Do you know why some brand or region produces better ingredients, say so. I know it seems simple and mundane but it really is not. I want to master your rice as you make it in your culture. Please tell me how.
So, how do you do rice?
What are your thoughts on book choi versus cabbage? I have been testing how different fresh and precooked vegetables alter the texture of fried rice. I usually use a medium or large cheese grater to get my fresh vegetables small enough to sauté quickly. I can size carrots to cook well in the same amount of time as a finely chopped onion (between 5-8mm square onion chunks/around 5mm × 15mm × 1mm carrot). The same grater with cabbage produces a thin almost shredded size, but this needs about 1.5 times longer to sauté well. I kinda like the texture it adds the few times I’ve tried it recently, but it isn’t really worth the extra effort for fried rice.
I typically do half an onion, green onion, 8-10 cloves of garlic and an equivalent amount of ginger, with some carrot sautéed, then I add precooked broccoli stocks (I wouldn’t eat otherwise) in a small chop, a bit of left over meat, any other left over veggies, and a half bag of frozen green peas.
What would you add/change to make this more interesting? I’ve thought about trying different beans.
I also often make rice with a few handfuls of roasted mixed nuts (peanut, almond, cashew, pecan, Brazil) and a handful of mixed raisins. This is half inspired by some rice at an old Persian restaurant I frequented. It is a really good rice mix to combine with some fresh fish. At some point I’ll probably try using this in a fried rice, but I’m skeptical where this experiment goes. I’m also curious about soy sauce alternatives. I use the pan stock from whatever meat I’ve cooked recently, or a small amount of canola oil. Any suggestions are welcome.
What interesting questions, I’ll start with a suggestion for an addition: mushrooms! I think they’ll really help to bring out the umami of the dish, and there are so many different types with variations of flavor and texture: I add portabella mushrooms to risotto, king oyster to soups and stir-frys, enoki is also really good in soup, black mushrooms are good in anything… I’ll just grab a few random varieties every time I’m at the store.
If the seasoning feels lacking try adding some acidity (lemon, lime, or rice vinegar), white pepper, and/or curry powder.
Also I’m not great at estimating dimensions, especially now that I’m trying to think in metric units, but I think when I saute things my cuts are considerably larger to preserve more of the texture of the ingredients. I’ll only shred the carrots if I’m cooking them with the rice in the rice cooker, otherwise I’ll go for something like this and have the onion julienned instead of diced, cabbage in like 1 inch squares, baby bok choi leaves whole. Oh also I feel like the baby white bok choi is better for cooking in the rice cooker, but the baby green bok choi is better for sautes.
Also choy-sum is like my new favorite vegetable but I just normally have it on its own, as opposed to bok choi, cabbage, or brocolli which I normally saute with other things. I’ll also usually cook gai-lan on its own, as well as green beans, asparagus, and brussels sprouts. Since green beans need so much time and heat to cook, I’ll normally use snow pea pods or sugar snap pea pods instead if I’m working with a mix of veggies.
For brussels sprouts I cut them in half and saute them face down on high heat until they fully caramelize to a golden brown, then flip them on their backs and add a tiny bit of water so they steam just enough to cook through. You don’t want to boil them or steam them too much or it will create bitter notes.
My curry will always have onion, carrot, mushroom, and cauliflower. Daikon, cabbage, yamaimo/nagaimo, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts, are also good additions. For lentils I’ll usually cook them with onion, mushroom, carrot, celery, and tuscan kale. I prefer them to still have some texture but my wife prefers it as a soup instead. Oh and I forgot to mention I’ll usually also pair the quinoa with sauted spinach, kale, and bell pepper.
Thanks for the shopping list to try out! Lots of great ideas here.