rice prep ?

[big_pear]

Too little time in the morning, will it harm the taste of the rice to let it soak all day before cooking it?

[Big Booger]

if it is brown rice you have to.. it should be fine to soak it. Just make sure to rinse it several times to get rid of all the dioxin..

[Andocrates]

It will get puffy and flake apart, I soak mine at least 1 hour, but sometimes I settle for 1/2 an hour. You can always try and see what happens.

[ramchop]

Soaking rice? What is the reason for that? What's wrong with not soaking it at all?

[Andocrates]

When you soak rice it plumps up, I think it also adds to the "stickiness" factor. I suppose you could eat rice raw and your body would process it but it's mostly for flavor and texture.

[ramchop]

After the rice cooker goes "click", if you leave it to sit for a while before opening it, it also plumps up.

[Big Booger]

I love mattake gohan cooked in the rice cooker.. yum yum
http://www5a.biglobe.ne.jp/~t-kou/mattake11.JPG

[Taro Toporific]

Soaking rice? What is the reason for that? What's wrong with not soaking it at all?

Rice cooks faster if soaked for a while (therefore it's more energy saving). If soaked all day, it gets too gluey. If not soaked at all, it can be slightly firmer (especially newly harvested rice).

Please note, it's the proper rinsing of rice that's the real issue in terms of taste and to nasty ag-chems, fumicide, talc, rat dust, etc. Sushi-ya will rise rice at least 6 times and I've some hot-shot places rinse for 3 hours under a clear running spring water (rinsing dry rice washes away nutrients, but hell, Japanese rice is not health food).

Rinse the raw rice several times under running water]nuke[/i] coating from the rice. Thank Buddha that most rice is coated now with some sort of cereal starch and not the dread talc. In the old days (up to about 12 years ago) semi-poisonous talc was used to coat Japanese rice, so rinsing was a heath/cancer issue. Let the rinsed rice drain in a colander, or bettter yet, the special rice-rinsing zaru, for 30-60 minutes.


---Taro, the sometimes rice farmer in Shikoku


Refer to...
Real Japanese instructions on how to cook "ill-smelling" USA/Japanese rice (soak only 30 minutes but rince it like crazy).
Or check out
PERFECT RICE, A MATTER OF CULTURE, TASTE, VARIETY -- To soak or not to soak?

[American Oyaji]

Actually, I buy rice here in the states.

But I don't buy the Calrose or Kouho (Kouko) rice that they sell in the ethnic section of the local suupaa (supermarket).

I go to the Japanese store and buy the rice they sell there because that rice is "REAL" rice. Expensive, but better.