The New Complete Book of Food

 The New Complete Book of Food

Storing This Food

Store rice in air- and moistureproof containers in a cool, dark cabinet to keep it dry and pro-

tect its fats from oxygen. White rice may stay fresh for as long as a year. Brown rice, which

retains its bran and germ and thus has more fats than white rice, may stay fresh for only a

few months before its fats (inevitably) oxidize. All rice spoils more quickly in hot, humid

weather. Aging or rancid rice usually has a distinctive stale and musty odor.

Preparing This Food

Should you wash rice before you cook it? Yes, if you are preparing imported rice or rice pur-

chased in bulk. No, if you are preparing prepacked white or brown rice.

You wash all varieties of bulk rices to flush away debris and/or insects. You wash imported

rices to rinse off the cereal or corn-syrup coating. You should pick over brown and white rices to

catch the occasional pebble or stone, but washing is either worthless or detrimental.

Washing brown rice has no effect one way or the other. Since the grains are protected

by their bran, the water will not flush away either starches or nutrients. Washing long-grain

white rices, however, will rinse away some of the starch on the surface, which can be a plus

if you want the rice to be as fluffy as possible. The downside is that washing the rice will

also rinse away any nutrients remaining on plain milled rice and dissolve the starch/nutrient

coating on enriched rices. Washing the starches off short-grain, Oriental rices will make the

rice uncharacteristically dry rather than sticky.

What Happens When You Cook This Food

Starch consists of molecules of the complex carbohydrates amylose and amylopectin packed

into a starch granule. When you cook rice, the starch granules absorb water molecules. When

the temperature of the water reaches approximately 140°F, the amylose and amylopectin

molecules inside the starch granules relax and unfold, breaking some of their internal bonds

(bonds between atoms on the same molecule) and forming new bonds between atoms on

different molecules. The result is a starch network of starch molecules that traps and holds

water molecules, making the starch granules even more bulky. In fact, rice holds so much

water that it will double or even triple in bulk when cooked.*

If you continue to cook the rice, the starch granules will eventually break open, the liq-

uid inside will leak out, the walls of the granules will collapse, and the rice will turn soft and

mushy. At the same time, amylose and amylopectin molecules escaping from the granules

will make the outside of the rice sticky—the reason why overcooked rice clumps together.

There are several ways to keep rice from clumping when you cook it. First, you can cook

the rice in so much water that the grains have room to boil without bumping into each other,

but you will lose B vitamins when you drain the excess water from the rice. Second, you

can sauté the rice before you boil it or add a little fat to the boiling liquid. Theoretically, this

* Cooking rice in liquids other than water (tomato juice, bouillon, wine) keeps the rice firmer, since the

grains will absorb solids along with water.