Topic: What to look for when buying rice - any tips

[Malc.]

Jerry, I tested the rice again last night having washed the rice first. I weighed out 200g of rice dry, rinsed and washed the rice, drained and weighed again. The weight was now 220g an increase of 10%. Is this similar to the weight differences you have experienced?

Something I have had to look at though is the measurement of dry rice per portion. The recommended weight as given is 75g per potion. I usually use 1 cup measure in volume for myself the wife and two children and this always works perfectly, the weight of rice is 180g. The 200g portion I made up to last night produced in my opinion, just about four adult portions of rice. So 75g of uncooked rice is far too much per portion. I will stick to my 1 cup measure for now, as it suits us best as a family but what weights are others using? I imagine 50g per portion is about right.

Back to the rinsing of the rice and the effect it has on the cook. Having soaked for about 2 minutes, I then rinsed the rice and followed the 10 min boil as before. I found that the rice was not as good as the blind test, being slightly over saturated with water but not sticky. This confirms that it only needs 8 mins to cook as I would prefer.

The bonus is that the wife who isn't a big fan of rice, actually quite enjoys this grain. The jury is still out for me as I can't help but feel it is slightly lacking in flavour, but with 4.5  left, I have plenty of time to get used to it. lol

[commis]

Hi
Axe,they say that they use year old paddy but this is generally classed as lower grade for milling. This is very odd.
Regards

[Malc.]

Hi commis, sorry you've lost me there, who uses 'paddy'?

[commis]

Hi
Axe, Kohinoor state that they use year old paddy rice for milling.
Regards

[Malc.]

I am certainly in the dark here. I would say taste wise that Tilda is far superior as it has taste, but the Kohinoor Gold I have currently is better texturally. It is light and less starchy than tilda, but is less flavour packed.

So the questions I have to ask, is what is the best basmati rice.  I don't want to buy 20kilo's of the stuff to experiment!