Survival Cooking 101: Rice

I remember the commercials for minute rice I saw as a child. "Oh, rice is so difficult to cook, takes a long time, and comes out horrible! Buy minute rice!"

Well, I was never much of a rice eater. And the reason was...every one was cooking minute rice. Its bland, not unlike cardboard. Then I was introduced to REAL rice. Now, I am a rice officianado. Even my best friend had remarked that she couldn't stand eating at her boyfriend's mother's house, because they used minute rice, but eating at my house was actually a joy. On top of that...I like to use chop sticks. Minute rice doesn't stick together enough for chop sticks, and I don't like eating one grain of rice at a time.

Honestly, rice is not that difficult to cook. 16 years ago, my mother-in-law had purchased a rice cooker for us. It eventually broke down (like everything else made overseas these days), but by then, I had figured out the trick.

First, you need a sauce pan with a tight-fitting lid. Next, you need 1 dry cup of rice and 2 wet cups of water. You can add butter or another oil, or you can add salt, but it is not necessary. You can also rinse the rice if you feel the need.

Put the ingredients into the sauce pan, put the lid on, and put it over high heat. Let it boil...almost to the point of boiling over. If it boils, but doesn't get to the point where its boiling over, then letting it boil for 4 of 5 minutes should work just fine. Then move it immedietly to a low heat...on a range top, this can be as easy as turning the heat down to the lowest setting possible. Over a camp fire, this would be moving it to where it is just warm.

Now all you need to do is let it sit over the low heat for 20 to 40 minutes. Honestly, the average amount cooked (1 cup of rice with 2 cups of water) should only take about 20-25 minutes, while larger amounts may take up to 30 minutes to absorb all of the water. But I have left the rice on the stove for up to 40 minutes without it burning.

The end result is that you get a rice that is nice and fluffy, but just sticky enough to eat it with chop sticks.

And since this article on cooking plain white rice is so short, here's two rice recipes that are common in the U.S.A. For any vegetables or meat in this recipe, you can use them dried...just reconstitute them before cooking.

Fried Rice

I'm not sure why, but there is a completely different flavor when you actually stir-fry rice rather than simply putting the ingredients in a bowl and tossing them.

Cook the rice as I explained above. The only MUST in this recipe is green onions and soy sauce. (We grow onions in our garden, and simply use the green tops from them). You can add eggs if you want, but being allergic to chicken eggs with no easy source of duck eggs, we've found it unnecessary.

You will probably want to use your largest pan or skillet for this, as you will need room to move your rice around.

Stir fry with a little oil (butter, lard, or other fat) in a little pan whatever meat and vegetables you plan to add to this first...except for the green onions. Green onions tend to get limp and icky if cooked too long. One recipe I looked at suggested using bacon...in which case you probably will not need any oil. Hard vegetables, like carrots, will need to be cooked longer than other things, like peas or zucchini, so cook them first and add the gentler-cooked items a minute or two later.

If you are adding eggs, you will want to scramble them first, push the veggies aside, and cook them as you would scrambled eggs right before you add the rice...just break them up into tiny bits right before adding the rice.

Then add the rice and green onions to the pan and either stir or toss. Add the soy sauce as you are stirring/tossing until the rice is just coated. (Too much soy sauce can make it too salty...too little soy sauce can be remedied by simply adding more when you sit down to eat). Sprinkle with pepper and salt as well. (I don't recommend MSG, but you can add that if you really feel the need to).

Stir and toss just long enough to get a majority of the rice coated with soy sauce and spices, and whatever else was added gets distributed evenly throughout.


Spanish rice

And here I'd been making it wrong all this time!

For each 1 cup of dry rice, reduce the water of the above recipe by 1/2 cup, and have 8 ounces of tomato sauce. (I also read where someone used tomato boullion added to 8 ounces of hot water...I don't know about you, but I've never seen tomato boullion. Must just not be popular around here.)

You can choose green peppers or spicier peppers...its your choice. You will also need some onion. If you wish, you can have some garlic powder, some cilantro, chili powder, or some green onions.

First, put your peppers, onions, and DRY rice in a pan with a little bit of oil and stir fry it. You want the rice to get a little brown, but not overly. Then put all of this in your pan with the tight-fitting lid with the water, tomato sauce, and whatever else you wish to add. Cook it exactly the same as you would plain rice.