RE: sticky rice and [CH] Rice Cooker
BURTON NEIL ALEXANDER, ITID (ATTBNA1@hq.psa.com.sg)
Thu, 25 Nov 1999 09:41:01 +0800
Point 1) Outside of the Occidental parts of asia, most societies eat rice
using fingers (Malays, Indonesians, Indians, Pakistanis etc). This is
another good reason why if you visit some of these places the rice is
stickier than it's western counterpart. It is easier to eat when it forms a
sticky ball, whether you use chopsticks, fingers, or spoons.
Point 2) When gravy surronds individual grains of seperated rice, it does
not encourage cohesion, unless of course the gravy is incredibly thick! All
you get is lots of wetter and more difficult to handle grains.
Anyway, I guess that this must be about as much about rice as the CH can
take
Neil
-----Original Message-----
From: Brent Thompson [mailto:brent@hplbct.hpl.hp.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 1999 1:26 AM
To: peter gaffney; BURTON NEIL ALEXANDER, ITID
Cc: chile-heads@hplbct.hpl.hp.com
Subject: Re: sticky rice and [CH] Rice Cooker
"BURTON NEIL ALEXANDER, ITID" <ATTBNA1@hq.psa.com.sg> wrote:
> This makes it impossible to use in most asian dishes, as these require a
> stickier rice that:
>
> A: can soak up plenty of gravy
> B: can actually be eaten with chopsticks
1) In total, the residents of the Asian countries India, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar ("Burma") account
for an awful lot of people, eating an awful lot of rice, and they don't use
chopsticks (except for any Chinese residing therein). The (doubtfully, but
possibly) slightly larger total numbers of Chinese and Japanese (and
probably Koreans?) with their chopsticks may perhaps account for somewhat
more "Asian dishes" being eaten with chopsticks than without, but it is
certainly misleading to think that most asian dishes require "stickier
rice".
2) In my observation, sticky rice soaks up considerably _less_ gravy than
non-sticky rice, and this would seem to make sense. To retain the
cohesiveness desired by chopstick users, sticky rice must determinedly
adhere to itself here-and-there, and everywhere it does so adhere it
necessarily excludes gravy from occupying the same place. On the contrary,
separate grains of rice allow gravy to surround everywhere; a result too
soupy for chopsticks is precisely because it contains so much gravy.
peter gaffney <peter.g@telus.net> wrote:
> <<...pre seasoned type, like jasmine or thai etc....>>
> this is ( i believe ) a western european, or north american
> preparation for rice. it's really like cooking pasta.
1) jasmine rice is not pre-seasoned, it is simply an especially fragrant,
(naturally fragrant) type of rice; Basmati is the other pre-eminently
famous type of fragrant rice.
2) This is not just a W.Europe/N.America method; plenty of traditional rice
preparation recipes outside W.Europe/N.America involve boiling the rice
then draining, e.g. India and Persia (Iran).
--- Brent