Everyone knows the previous dependable white rice that we normally use as a facet dish for grilled meat or as a base for a shrimp fried rice. Maybe we’ve got additionally used it to stuff greens, to offer physique to a soup plate and even to organize a refreshing drink. The rice we already use may be very versatile, and for this very cause, we don’t cease to assume if there are different varieties with different qualities.
Do you know there are extra rice varieties than these you normally purchase and eat? Within the following strains, we are going to briefly let you know about them.
Classifications of rice
There are a number of methods to categorise the completely different rice species and varieties, together with the botanical classification. We are going to depart this one apart, in order to not make issues harder with scientific phrases from biology, and we are going to focus first on the classification of rice by its form. Rice varieties are normally categorized this fashion for business and culinary functions.
Lengthy-grain rice
Lengthy-grain rice varieties are characterised by their remarkably elongated grains—three or extra occasions longer than huge. A typical instance of long-grain rice is Jasmine rice, a scrumptious selection which you’ll be able to study in additional element at mahatmarice.com/merchandise/jasmine-white-rice/.
Lengthy grains are very wealthy in starch, so that they require extra cooking time, and, relying on the kind, are likely to clump collectively in boiling water. Nevertheless, if cooked accurately, they don’t kind a compact sticky mass, however the little lumps shaped, when cooled, separate from one another and don’t stick collectively. This makes them simple to eat with chopsticks, which is why the long-grain varieties are extensively consumed in East and Southeast Asia.
As they’re very wealthy in starch, which incorporates numerous fragrant compounds, long-grain varieties are additionally very tasty. Relying on the varieties, the flavour, particularly when the grains are sizzling, might be much like nuts, popcorn and even mushrooms.
Medium-grain rice
Medium-grain rice varieties have grains which might be about twice so long as they’re huge. Their starch content material is decrease than that of long-grain rice. If correctly ready, medium-size grains don’t kind lumps and stay fairly free. Because of this medium-grain varieties are probably the most consumed outdoors Asia and Africa, particularly in tropical and subtropical America, the Caribbean and southern.
Europe, the place free grains are most popular for the rice dishes cooked in these areas. A typical medium-grain rice is the one used to make paella.
Because it incorporates much less starch, medium-grain rice is normally much less flavorful, but it surely serves completely nicely as a facet dish or as a base for a meal with loads of seasoning and a few items of meat or fish.
Brief-grain rice
Brief-grain rice varieties produce grains which might be nearly as huge as they’re lengthy, making them virtually spherical in look. These grains are normally wealthy in a type of pectin, and due to this, they have a tendency to stay collectively to kind compact plenty. For that reason, they’re technically referred to as ‘glutinous rice’—from the Latin phrase gluten, that means ‘glue’. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t be misled by this identify, since short-grain rice varieties, like all others, lack the attribute protein of wheat grains referred to as gluten.
As a result of they have a tendency to stay collectively in compact plenty, quick grains are extensively utilized in far northeast Asia to cook dinner candy dishes and the rest that requires grains caught collectively in roughly giant parts.
A typical number of short-grain rice is the so-called Japanese rice, used to organize sushi.
Brown rice and white rice
After all, rice varieties might be categorized by different standards, similar to degree of processing. Thus, we acquire the next varieties:
• Brown rice: grains from which the fiber layer masking them—referred to as bran—has not been eliminated. As a result of bran, brown rice grains have their attribute shade.
• White rice: grains from which the bran layer has been eliminated, leaving solely the starch reserve.
• Semi-brown rice: white rice with bran residues.
• Rice with germ: grains from which the plant embryo has not been eliminated.
Now you recognize there are extra styles of rice than the one you at all times purchase and eat, and you may select the extra appropriate rice to strive a brand new and scrumptious dish.
