Food Grievance! Why do we eat that disgusting supermarket rice in the Netherlands?
Adeline loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. Usually things go well, but sometimes they don’t. In the series Eddie’s Food Grievances, she shares her culinary observations. This week, she just has to say something about our lack of interest in rice and the disgusting rice we buy at the supermarket.
The wonder of rice abroad
You wouldn’t expect it, but (besides pita and that divine salad with a thick slice of feta on top) rice is one of my favorite side dishes in Greece. Rice there is crispy, rice there is flavorful, rice there is spicy, and with a bit of luck they’ll even let it simmer for 100 years in a delicious tomato sauce.
Rice there is simply so different from the way we make it. And besides, they’re proud of ‘their’ rice, because they know perfectly well that it tastes best there.
Rice deserves love (and stock)
And us? We manage to plop nothing but a tasteless white grain onto a plate. With a bit of luck, there’s some chicken curry on the side and that’s it. Right? No, no and no again. Rice deserves so much more love than what we do to the ingredient. The grains should be soaking up one flavorful stock or another, or Lap Cheung, and slurping it all up.
Good-for-nothings when it comes to rice
You fry rice, deglaze rice, sprinkle rice with love and lovingly toss it around in the pan. You treat rice like a good friend, pampering it with care (before you eat it, obviously). But what do we do? Absolutely nothing. We’re good-for-nothings when it comes to rice; the only thing that comes out of our pans is boring, bland, meaningless rice. Why?
Supermarket rice: criminal
There should be a punishment for abusing rice. If one more parent says that a child doesn’t like rice, it’s due to a total lack of interest in its preparation. Can you blame them? Those stripped-down, washed-out, meaningless little grains don’t make a single living soul happy.
It actually starts with your choice of rice. For example, just move one shelf over toward brown rice and things immediately become a lot more enjoyable. Suddenly you discover that rice does indeed have flavor of its own, but that all sorts of things are simply washed away to turn it into white rice. It’s criminal.
Tip: make small portions
And whatever you do, make smaller portions than the amount stated on that cardboard box. Because besides having absolutely no idea how to prepare it properly, we also throw half of it away because of that ridiculous cooking advice. If you were to believe and follow the cooking instructions, the entire street would be eating rice at my place tonight. That’s why I dare say we’re the biggest rice wasters in the world.
How to turn rice into a party: the art of fried rice
Until you make something delicious with it, that is. Then you wouldn’t dream of throwing something so heavenly into the trash, of course. The latter is also a very bad idea for several reasons. You can still make amazing fried rice with it.
Also read:
- Buying pandan rice: you’re often in for a surprise
- 8 mistakes you make when cooking rice
- Say no to brown rice
