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Archive for the ‘Rice’ Category

Fried rice is a quick, easy and nutritious dish.

Ideally the rice should be cooked the day before (see the steamed rice recipe), spread out on a tray and allowed to cool and dry in the refrigerator. Once it has cooled it can be placed in an airtight container and stored in the refrigerator till the next day. This is not essential but it helps to stop the rice sticking together when you are making the fried rice.

The ingredients are not critical and you can use lots of different ingredients as long as they do not produce too much moisture on cooking. The ingredients I have listed here are suggestions – feel free to experiment.

Ingredients:

2 or 3 eggs
100 – 200 g bacon rashers, chopped
2 or 3 shallots or 1 small onion
1 red capsicum, chopped
2 small carrots, diced
1 tin baby corn, chopped
soy sauce
oil for cooking
4 cups cooked rice

Method:

1. Lightly whisk the eggs.
2. Heat  a little oil in the wok and cook the egg turning it over halfway through the cooking process.  You may find it better if you rotate the wok to get the egg to coat the sides thus forming a thin omlette rather than having a thick mass of egg at the bottom of the wok.
3. Remove egg from wok and set aside. When cool, cut into small pieces.
4. Heat a little oil in the wok and add the chopped bacon, If using onion instead of shallots add it at the same time as the bacon.  Stir fry for a couple of minutes.
5. Add the carrot and stir fry a further two minutes.
6. Add remaining vegetables (including shallots) and cook a further two minutes.
7. Add cooked rice and stir through until rice is heated. Add soy sauce to taste.
8. When rice has heated, add chopped egg and stir through.
9. Serve while hot.

Variations:

As noted earlier you can use lots of different ingredients depending on what is in season and what you have available at the time. For example, you could use celery and add it at the same time as the carrot. You could use broccoli or cauliflower, beans, snowpeas, mushrooms etc.

Tips

If you use different coloured vegetables, the dish will look appetising and inviting. This is one way to get kids to eat vegetables they might not otherwise eat. If the vegetables are chopped finely, they don’t stand out so much and the flavour combines with the other ingredients so the kids may be less likely to object to eating it.

Let’s start with some basics. Rice is a great accompaniment to many meals. Because it absorbs sauces and juices, it takes on the flavour of the foods it is served with, so that, as well as being filling, it is also delicious.

Most people know they can cook rice by boiling it in a large amount of water but a more efficient method of cooking it is the absorption method.  Sure, you can buy a rice cooker to do that but it is one more gadget to take up room in your kitchen, and really, when you see how easy it is to do, you will wonder why you even considered buying a rice cooker. Okay, let’s get started.

Steamed Rice

Ingredients:

2 cups long grain rice

Method:

1. Wash the rice in cold water until the water runs clear (this removes the starch dust from white rice and stops it becoming gluggy). If you are using brown rice then the rice won’t need to be rinsed as long.
2. Put the rice in a saucepan and add cold water until it is about 2.5cm (or 1 inch) above the rice level. (You can check the level by sticking your finger in – your hands should be clean : you did wash them before you started, right?)
3. Bring the rice to the boil and then reduce the heat to medium. Continue cooking until the water has evaporated leaving air bubbles through the rice. You don’t want to leave too much water at the bottom of the air holes, but you also don’t want to let all of the water boil away as you could end up burning the rice. Once you have done this once or twice you will know when to move to the next step.
4. Cover tightly and turn off the heat. Let the rice stand on the stove covered for 20 minutes. For brown rice let it stand for about 30 minutes. Don’t lift the lid during this time as the steam and residual heat cook the rice to perfection. We put a grater (one of the large 4-sided tall ones) on top of the saucepan lid at this stage. The rest of the family know that they are not to lift the lid of any saucepan that has a grater on it or else!
5. After the rice has stood for the required time you can remove the lid and serve it up.

Notes

Use a reasonably large saucepan for the rice as white rice expands when cooked.

This is a very efficient way of cooking rice as you are using just the right amount of water and you do not have to boil it for ages.

Cooked rice should be treated the same as you would fish or poultry – don’t keep it in the fridge too long after cooking. It provides a great medium for bacteria to grow in.

Variations

Once you have mastered the basic technique, you can modify as required. For example, putting a little saffron in the water will give the rice the bright yellow colour seen in many Indian dishes.

You can also use cold stock rather than plain water to cook the rice.  This will give flavour to the rice and you could almost consider it a cheat’s risotto as all you need to add then are some cooked vegetables, meat, or poultry and you have a meal.

Tip

When cooking rice you might like to cook more than you need and use the left over rice to make fried rice. When making fried rice it is much easier to cook it if it has been prepared in advance. Simply place it on an oven tray in the refrigerator to dry out a little. Once it has dried, transfer it to a container and seal until you are ready to use it.