5 ms·

>Cooking rice is difficult? Hmm .... I didn't downvote your comment but your dismissive snark seems out of place since the _history_ of "tricky/difficult/labor

by jasode 6y ago

>Cooking rice is difficult? Hmm .... I didn't downvote your comment but your dismissive snark seems out of place since the _history_ of "tricky/difficult/labored" was explained in the article: >It was painfully tricky. Cooking rice this way, says columnist and food writer Makiko Itoh, takes heat modulation: high heat until the water and rice boils, then low heat, then high heat again. “And that, with a wood-burning stove, is very difficult.” Each day, Japanese women rose at dawn and labored for several sweaty hours to make rice. (A contemporary restaurant in Nara, Japan, offers a kamado-cooking experience that starts with 15 minutes of pumping a bellows to fan the flames.)

eternalban 6y ago
The article makes general statements about cooking rice, but it is really about cooking rice Japanese style. In some rice eating countries, automatic rice cookers never really took off because of the 'quality' of the product is obviously East Asia centric, which is considered 'mushy' rice in West Asia. With some rice cooking approaches, the amount of water makes no difference as whatever is left is drained after a fixed period of time, and then it's simmer time. "Burning" of the bottom is also locale dependent. In Persian Cuisine for example, the art of making 'Tah-Deeg' (lit. bottom of the pot) is one of the stepping stones of becoming a serious cook, and generally this is the bit of the rice that family fights over at the table. Bottom line, OP is correct, imho.
- cangencer 6y ago
  +1, in countries like Turkey, Persia, India, Pakistan rice cookers are pretty uncommon. In my home country of Turkey where rice is eaten very commonly, I've never heard of a single person use it. Further, rice is typically first washed several times, fried with a bit of oil and perhaps some spices before being simmered. I don't know if it's possible to do this with a Japanese style rice-cooker.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - robotmay 6y ago
    I use a Japanese-style rice cooker and mine will do this I believe, and even has a specific tahdig setting, though as I have nothing to compare it to, I can't attest to its authenticity :) https://www.yumasia.co.uk/bamboo-induction-heating-ceramic-rice-cooker https://www.yumasia.co.uk/bamboo-induction-heating-ceramic-r... The more basic models don't have features like that, however.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
graycat 6y ago
Then the article is wrong, wildly, overwhelmingly, brain-dead wrong. For the "hours" story, that must be wrong. Cooking rice is EASY, over any heat source with just a covered pot, iron, stainless steel, aluminum -- just a pot. Your quote shows that the article is wrong. I did NOTHING at all wrong. Instead I just explained how darned easy it is to cook rice. For anyone taken in by the article that there is a challenge to cooking rice, I did a good service. What wrote is just what I got off the back of a plastic bag of rice decades ago. It was a good recipe then. It's a good recipe now. There is NOTHING wrong with what I wrote. I will delete my post and let others struggle with the severe "challenge" of cooking rice. The article was absurd -- cooking rice is EASY. Enjoy your struggle of hours cooking rice. Bye bye.
- robotmay 6y ago
  Good lord this is one of the saltiest posts I've ever seen on here, which is an accomplishment. The simple lesson here is: what is easy for you is not necessarily easy for everyone else, and you should not get pissy if you state your opinion so miserably and everybody fights back. Also, yes it's fairly easy to cook rice in a pan. I cook rice probably 4 days a week, and I now use a rice cooker. My rice cooker: - Can be set up ahead of time - Has different cooking profiles for different varieties of rice - Can keep the rice warm, safely, for many hours after it's cooked - Cooks the rice very well. It even has a special mode for cooking the rice longer in a specific way, which results in extremely nice-tasting rice It means that I have rice ready and waiting when I finish cooking the rest of the meal, which no longer has to be timed alongside the rice, which means I can focus on cooking the interesting food and not the bloody rice. Your experience is different from many others. Fix your attitude.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    What is the special mode you mention? I'm thinking of getting a rice cooker, is this mode standard in most models or is it specific to yours?
    - claudeganon 6y ago

by jasode 6y ago

eternalban 6y ago

The article makes general statements about cooking rice, but it is really about cooking rice Japanese style. In some rice eating countries, automatic rice cookers never really took off because of the 'quality' of the product is obviously East Asia centric, which is considered 'mushy' rice in West Asia. With some rice cooking approaches, the amount of water makes no difference as whatever is left is drained after a fixed period of time, and then it's simmer time. "Burning" of the bottom is also locale dependent. In Persian Cuisine for example, the art of making 'Tah-Deeg' (lit. bottom of the pot) is one of the stepping stones of becoming a serious cook, and generally this is the bit of the rice that family fights over at the table. Bottom line, OP is correct, imho.

cangencer 6y ago
+1, in countries like Turkey, Persia, India, Pakistan rice cookers are pretty uncommon. In my home country of Turkey where rice is eaten very commonly, I've never heard of a single person use it. Further, rice is typically first washed several times, fried with a bit of oil and perhaps some spices before being simmered. I don't know if it's possible to do this with a Japanese style rice-cooker.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- robotmay 6y ago
  I use a Japanese-style rice cooker and mine will do this I believe, and even has a specific tahdig setting, though as I have nothing to compare it to, I can't attest to its authenticity :) https://www.yumasia.co.uk/bamboo-induction-heating-ceramic-rice-cooker https://www.yumasia.co.uk/bamboo-induction-heating-ceramic-r... The more basic models don't have features like that, however.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

graycat 6y ago

Then the article is wrong, wildly, overwhelmingly, brain-dead wrong. For the "hours" story, that must be wrong. Cooking rice is EASY, over any heat source with just a covered pot, iron, stainless steel, aluminum -- just a pot. Your quote shows that the article is wrong. I did NOTHING at all wrong. Instead I just explained how darned easy it is to cook rice. For anyone taken in by the article that there is a challenge to cooking rice, I did a good service. What wrote is just what I got off the back of a plastic bag of rice decades ago. It was a good recipe then. It's a good recipe now. There is NOTHING wrong with what I wrote. I will delete my post and let others struggle with the severe "challenge" of cooking rice. The article was absurd -- cooking rice is EASY. Enjoy your struggle of hours cooking rice. Bye bye.

robotmay 6y ago
Good lord this is one of the saltiest posts I've ever seen on here, which is an accomplishment. The simple lesson here is: what is easy for you is not necessarily easy for everyone else, and you should not get pissy if you state your opinion so miserably and everybody fights back. Also, yes it's fairly easy to cook rice in a pan. I cook rice probably 4 days a week, and I now use a rice cooker. My rice cooker: - Can be set up ahead of time - Has different cooking profiles for different varieties of rice - Can keep the rice warm, safely, for many hours after it's cooked - Cooks the rice very well. It even has a special mode for cooking the rice longer in a specific way, which results in extremely nice-tasting rice It means that I have rice ready and waiting when I finish cooking the rest of the meal, which no longer has to be timed alongside the rice, which means I can focus on cooking the interesting food and not the bloody rice. Your experience is different from many others. Fix your attitude.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  What is the special mode you mention? I'm thinking of getting a rice cooker, is this mode standard in most models or is it specific to yours?
  - claudeganon 6y ago