I´ve adopted this habit some years ago despite the fact that my diet is not based mostly on rice. I buy ten kilos, then I put it in glass jars with a tight lid to prevent any contamination and I am good to go for some time. It is cheaper, it prevents unneccessary packaging and in any case you have the amount you need in consistent quality. In many countries the sack of rice is also like a life insurance. You know you have something to eat the next months, even if you don´t have income for whatever reason, or food is out of stock.
I’m Mexican, grandfather from Spain, we cook the rice same as you, lightly fried/toasted with onion, garlic and sometimes fideo pasta, then add liquid. I was confused too, thanks for clarifying that since I don’t recall my mom ever washing it, also since I tent camp a lot water is something you don’t want to waste washing rice, water is absolutely precious when camping. Thanks for the great informative video.
Same here. Mom sometimes washes rice, but less so since she moved to the US. She told me when she was growing up in rural Mexico that it was necessary due to the reasons mentioned in the video, but since moving here she doesn’t do it all the time unless for a specific reason.
@@kaidanalenko5222 We forgot that a doctorate backed by a decade of education isn't enough to communicate information 🙄🙄🙄. You're not reading a thesis, you're attending a class.
Here in the Philippines, I occasionally bite into tiny pebbles when my rice isn't washed properly. Which is probably why rice fortification did not work here. Washing rice was necessary.
Also the bugs crawling in the rice lolllll. I don't think not washing rice would work for us considering local farmers will dry their rice on the side of roads and it gets debris in it 🤷♀
if you still buy rice from sack or small brand not mass brand that use multi-milion tool, you still have to wash rice but i still wash my rice even i buy from mass brand because of starch.
@@shawnkay5462 Do you think it's because of what the rice went through from the farm to you?? When I was in Viet Nam the farmers would spread the rice on half of a two lane rural road. When dried in the sun they swept it up with a broom. I don't know about the Philippines but with American grown rice that's not done. It doesn't touch the ground after being harvested in the field.
This was the video I never knew I needed to watch as an Asian growing up in Asia. I've always low-key judged people who don't wash their rice, but I'm humbly reminded that rice also grows outside of the continent. It should be and is a beautiful thing that rice are grown and prepared differently on the other part of the world. Maybe I'll try cooking some western recipes with rice!
the reason i dont wash my rice here in the southeaster united states is because when i do wash my rice the grains becomes a sort of mush but if i leave it alone and just cook it it turns out firm and depending on how much water you use you can get it a sort of al dente texture to it.
Born in Japan, raised in Hawaiʻi, my family's preferred rice variety was medium grain sticky rice from California. Back then during the whole of the 1960s, and into the early 1970s the rice came covered in a talc powder which kept the rice dry, discouraged insects, and extended the shelf life. This talc had to be washed off before cooking and eating. Not sure when the rice processors stopped using talc, but glad they did.
I'm glad they did, too! Especially now that we know about asbestos contamination in talc. It's now being removed from cosmetics and baby powder for that reason.
@@phantomkate6 Just so you know... they're not removing the talcum powder from baby powder. They're changing the refinement and testing for it to make sure asbestos isn't in the powder. Any baby powder that you buy that does not *_expressly point out_* that it's "talc-free" still has talcum powder in it.
@@phantomkate6 well it would have been nice if you said that in your original post instead of having to have someone else explain it. Its not good to tell only half the story.
@@TheBitter73 I didn't realize I needed to spell out the definition of 'contamination,' since I thought it was common knowledge and we're on the internet anyway. Sorry.
This video made me understand the importance of food science for the first time. I used to think food science mostly as a chemist making synthetic flavors. But the knowledge of all the different facts of rice provided here made me open my eyes and be fascinated by it. Thank you.
Back in '60s when I learned to prepare rice from my mother, rice was coated with talc. Besides being Japanese and preparing rice as her mother had taught her (wash until the water runs clear, soak for hours, then cook), my mom said she didn't like the idea of eating talc. She was ahead of her time, as we know now that ingesting talc has been associated with stomach cancer.
Packaging and extra packaging is additional cost which will always be downloaded to the end consumer. As an end consumer, why spend more on the same item when you can spend less on the item with less processing and less cost attached?
i buy my rice from japanese suppliers and i still find tiny stones or pebbles or coagulated blobs of rice in it from time to time, so of course im gonna wash it thoroughly (unless im making sushi then that starch is necessary so i sift it instead or wash only once) and a habit that i personally do and most japanese restaurants also do for large batches of rice is to put all of the cooked rice onto a basket and shuffle it with a rice spoon to fluff it up and let it dry faster, adding seasoned rice vinegar if the batch is meant for sushi/nigiri or rice balls. i find that no matter what brand i buy even if its the incredibly expensive imported rice from the states (im from southeast asia so importing from the other side of the world is practically highway robbery) i always always find stones/pebbles or bugs at least 5 times a year. and thats enough to do lasting damage to the body over the course of decades. so i just do what my mom taught me and always always wash my rice. i should add that as of may 2022 i've already found 7 foreign objects in my imported high quality rice, and its not even halfway through this year yet. a possible reason why i found much more this year than i usually do is because the health & quality standards for produce has dropped a lot during the pandemic to meet the scarcity of many nations lacking basic goods, particularly in most of asia. so it honestly doesn't matter where in the world your rice comes from, you should still wash it. also most filipinos can tell the difference between fake rice and real rice, and while the poor generally dont care and eat it regardless, the well off will absolutely not buy that garbage. why? because in recent years a lot of counterfeit rice dealers have been selling poly-cellulose based fake rice to people for virtually nothing, which have created a lot of new problems for the country because poly-cellulose is indigestible (its fecking plastic). so they have to force these fools to puke it all out, or perform surgery to remove it from their stomach. another reason is because most people here feckin hate it when our rice, bread, and whatever else is enriched or fortified by artificial chemicals, minerals, and vitamins like bromine and riboflavin, mainly due to disgust of seeing people overdose multivitamins and suddenly suffer from illnesses caused by vitamin overdose. like the case of a person who consumed a full bottle of vitamin-d softgel tablets and died 8 hours later due to vitamin-d toxicity induced hypercalcemia.
Grandma and mom always washed their rice before cooking and browned/toasted it slightly to add some flavour prior to adding water for cooking. Just discovered this channel, this is awesome, you're doing a great job!
We wash rice because of the same reason we peel pau skin we don’t trust the workers who touch it after giving their balls a good scratch I’m not even joking
Ok in india everyone does it. Remember Asia is not a identity from isis terrorist to Chinese to Mongolian to Siberian to India belong to same continent
I grew up in Japan, and while I will always wash my own rice (due to tradition and personal preferences), you make great points and I entirely agree with those points. Keep being awesome.
You can wash rice like pandan rice and it gets individual and fluffy. You can wash japanese rice and it still stays sticky. Proof that washing rice is superior :P
The world's largest rice mill is in my city in Arkansas. An absolute crap ton of rice is grown and processed in my area. We've never washed rice, but the packaging usually specifies not to. On a neat side note, some company is opening a commercial scale sake brewery in Arkansas. They even have local farmers who are growing traditional Japanese sake rice varieties.
Why are people on UA-cam able to make presentations with a wealth of information like this in under 20 minutes but professors at my university can't make a lesson nearly this engaging and easy to absorb and dense in information....
Well. A youtube video you personally clicked becuse you felt like it. And tbh. You (i done it thousand of Times) prob started a video and x seconds into it went meeh. And stopped watching
Adam is picking especially interesting topics on purpose, if his channel was more like a university degree and tried to teach you EVERYTHING you need to know, you'll have a lot of boring videos about things you won't care about at all.
Another thing to take into account is the quality of the rice. Even though I've being cooking mostly the same brand of long white rice for years their quality has shifted a lot. At first it didn't contain a lot of free starch and it was great to cook without washing just by using the exact amount of water. I don't know what they did, but the amount of free starch grew a lot. If you try to cook it like that now, by the time the grain is done, the rice will be stuck in a jelly like texture. If you try to cook it like pasta without washing the starch will grow on top of the water until it falls from the pot; if you let the lid on it gets even worse. You even need to wash it around 10 times to get almost clear water out of it. For me both methods are valid, though for the first one you need a decent rice.
I do find the concept of rice being sold in small plastic packages in small serving sizes to be utterly alien to me. Along with instant rice products. It's too drilled into my head that rice comes in big sacks. At the same time I'm totally fine with instant noodles, so eh. That said I ignorantly tried to make Paella once with washed rice and it wasn't very pleasant. I was also using the wrong type of grain on top of that.
This is what I've experienced too, it's just habit to buy big plastic or cloth sacks of rice to then store, wash and cook in a rice cooker for like five days at a time.
Hello there. Wasn't expecting you here too. I'm starting to feel that either our tastes in UA-cam videos are extremely similar, or that you're just an omnipotent being lurking out in comments section on UA-cam
As an Indian, it was interesting that an american educated me why Indians wash and drain rice. Honestly i didn't know about this and i am sure there are many who don't, even to this day. Thanks a lot Adam 😊
Man, this guy is an idiot. Never take cooking lessons from an American. Ever. Your great evidence is just one paper that's not peer-reviewed. People write papers on anything and everything. That's not evidence.
I was also shocked to hear East Asians don't drain their rice! Any East Asians in here, what do you do with the remaining water? Do you boil it off? Do you chug it like Badlands drinking the ocean?
@@BreakdancePeach I believe many / most East Asians use rice cookers to prepare their rice. The rice and cooker specify exactly how much water to add so there isn't any remaining.
Thanks for a reasoned explanation about washing or not. I'm in the US and generally do not wash it. I also do not drain it. I almost always make rice in my instant pot cooker and there is usually no water left to drain.
What's this got to do with asian race 🤔if you don't have asian family but you're from other race land run away hole in America 99.999 % third world country Rafggies migration always says who they're what they're I feel sorry fir you you poor run away hole
Growing up in Spain, I had never heard of washing your rice. Then, after moving to my own place in the UK and exploring other cuisines, I kept reading that you should wash your rice for both East Asian and Southeast Asian recipes, so I did because that's what the recipe called for. Now after watching your video it makes more sense: the unique texture of paella comes precisely from unwashed rice and the binding properties of free starch, while the fluffiness in curries and stir fry rice comes from having washed your rice and removed the sticky free starch.
Well here in the Philippines we washed it too for paella..And it still bind like unwashed, This guy in the video already said it rice is a solid starch either you wash it or not it will still bind when cook...The only difference is with unwashed it taste a little bit earthy and have distinct smell that is unappetizing to Asian..
actually I think it's more to do with water content. For example, fried rice is best made with day old, refrigerated rice bc it's drier that way, which is why some recipes suggest that if you don't have that, you should add less water to your rice cooker. The deciding factor really isn't whether you wash it or not; in older times ppl washed it bc it wasn't as clean as it is now and husks&dust may still be present.
Leave him alone and btw middleeasterns aka people like me also have a rice as predominant side/dish so stop it with the sterotypes and all that bullshit
if you want rice that's "fluffier" or separate easily, go for basmati. it's my favorite rice primarily because of texture and more firmness. other premium rice like jasmine tend to be more "porridgy" for me and too soft even with less water.
with basmati, I find it has to be washed a lot or else its extremely clumpy. For me usually I'll wash it 7 or 8 times and sometimes fry the rice beforehand as well, in order to get fluffy basmati.
Adam, how about a video on types of rice: jasmine, basmati, long grain, short grain, etc and where they are advantageous? I never realized washing rice was bad for risotto until you explained it.
There's even a restaurant hack to add _more_ free starch when cooking risotto to order: you blend cooked rice and water to a slurry in a high-powered blender, refrigerate it, and add it in small amounts together with the stock, to help form a strong emulsion (starch-fat-water bond) in the pan.
So did you just think you were bad at making risotto this whole time? Because there's no way you could have gotten the same creamy, luscious texture with your washed risotto rice than you would have gotten otherwise
@@raerohan4241 No, I only started washing rice this year. I started using jasmine as my go to rice and wash. I haven't made risotto since I did that. Back then, I was using brown rice. Without this warning, I would have made my next batch with jasmine and washed it.
Jasmine and Basmati rice are both long grain rice, there's really only 3 kinds of rices. Long, short, and medium (the "it's too short to be long and too long to be short" group). Jasmine and Basmati are probably the most famous long grained rice, along with the American white/brown long grain variants; arborio, valencia, and bomba rice (the stuff used for Risotto and Paella) are the most common medium grain rice; and short grain rice is actually extremely uncommon beyond some use in sushi (some sushi rice is short, some medium, it sort of depends. Sometimes short grain and medium grain rice are both called short grain (or medium) because actual short grain rice is so underutilized. The actual reason for why certain rices are better suited for certain preparations (i.e; Arborio or Valencia for Risotto or Bomba for Paella, and tbh either for both) is because certain rice cultivations tend to contain more free starches than others, or less. Arborio, Valencia, and Bomba tend to have a large amount of free starch and the shape of the rice lends itself best to those styles of dishes, whereas Jasmine tends to have less free starch and if you were to cook it into Paella or Risotto has a tendency to break during the cooking process because of how long it is compared to how wide it is (in terms of grain shape). source: 15 years cooking, background in culinary arts education
I remember as a child in a remote village in Turkey we had to not only wash the rice but pick through it little by little, to pick out the little tiny rocks that were still inside. The whole process was very long and boring. But if you didn't do it, you could easily chip and crack your tooth when you had your next bite. You had to dump the rice on a flat surface, then like counting pennies get small individual bits of rice and move them to the other end of the table, picking out stones in the process. This was usually a family event where all the women and children would help do it together. After that, the rice would get washed thoroughly and left soaking overnight, and then the cooking would take place the next day. Now I can just put a bag of Uncle Ben's in the microwave for 2 minutes and I have rice. I had forgotten all about it until I watched this video.
@@JTBCP They weren't cleaned properly I guess, sometimes there would be tiny black ones, they were easy to find, but other times there would be yellow-ish ones that would be a lot harder to find.
Great video! I didn't know about the arsenic problem. I mostly buy Jasmine rice out of Thailand. But it's good to know. I figure each dish would require washing or not washing according to the cuisine. Just as the dish dictates whether you use jasmine, basmati, long grain or short grain rice. I hadn't heard of the"pasta" method of cooking rice before. Cool to know. I use a zojirushi rice cooker except for Mexican rice. Your videos are always very educational. Thanks for all the effort you put into them.
This reminds me of a story I heard about a recipe that called for cutting a chicken in half at the start. Turned out the reason for cutting the chicken in half was due to the size of the pot grandmother was using.
Yep this Italian granny with 1st gen parents-&1frm Est European(b4 ww2?)- whatever-but this kid has done his research(just sneak away&rinse that long grain rice)last month-got less starch- less tiny pebble'rocks' even hard broken ones-If the really old ones(over 79) freak at least check it or they may crack their dental plate- Hey Karma
oh, I saw that as a turkey where the woman's mother told her to cut the legs off before cooking, because "her mother did that". They called granny, and the turkey didn't fit in the roasting pan with them on.
As a resident of West Bengal, India, since my birth have seen most people and my own family consume rice or rice based dishes multiple times almost everyday and this is the first time I'm learning many people Don't wash rice. I get it now, but my instincts still makes me feel it's odd. We wash it and also drain it. A lot of people also soak the rice after washing, allowing faster cooking times and insanely fluffy rice. And talking about nutrients, we have really cheap sachets of nutrient powder available that a lot of people buy and add in while the rice is boiling. I have never seen foreign particles in my cloth bags of rice tho, those blowing machines Adam talked about... Rice is passed through those, or in very rural areas there is a manual process for that too... So we don't worry about that.
I have a big... BIG... BIIIIGGGGG... muscles!!! HAHAHA!!! What did you think I was going for? That's so DIRTY of you! GAGAGAGA!!! I am the funniest UA-camr ever! Maybe that's the reason why I have TWO (!!!) HOT (!) GIRLFRIENDS. Thanks for being alive, dear chab
This is an amazingly clear and helpful video. No frills; just lots of information, presented in logical order with just the right amount of detail, and backed by an expert's knowledge and documented research. Thank you!
My mother growing up in Singapore in the 70s/80s always told us that they washed the rice growing up to get rid of the rocks and the weevils. In Australia (and probably also in modern Singapore) these aren't really issues you need to worry about, but I wash the rice anyway out of habit (and also because once or twice I HAVE found weevils and I don't want to risk it). Also, if you use brown rice there's often a few husks leftover in the rice and washing helps to get them out.
I’m Thai and I really do appreciate how you do all the research on rice from every culture. Tbh it doesn’t matter to me how anyone do their rice. Wash or not. Use scale, cups or finger method. As long as it’s your preference, it shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
Unfortunately not every asian thinks and understand like you, some of us are embarrassing ignorants and expect everyone to eat and live how our ancestors did decades and centuries ago.
I appreciate your thinking too, @mintysnack, and you are very right. But I also appreciate Andrew’s research- I think because as a Pacific Islander, I’m curious to understand why should I wash my calrose rice when I’m planning to enjoy my Asian inspired dishes (sushi, musubi, conge etc…) versus not having to wash the rice I’m using for risotto which I really love just as much as any other comfort food. But the research is really just too awesome in the end. Cheers from Guam.
I don't mind not washing rice, using scale, finger, or what not. Especially if I am not the one who eat it. But serve me cooked rice rinsed with water, and I will politely decline that, thank you.
I'm from a traditional Chinese home. My parents always wash and rinse rice before cooking. My dad asked the rice sellers, importers. they stated there is a minuscule wax coating over the rice. This is to keep rice from sticking, forming clumps. Hence the reason to wash some of this coating off. You always notice a cloudy white water after washing rice. Guess what's causing the cloudiness?
We do wash our rice here in Iran. Rice is in almost every meal we eat and we usually buy It in 20 Kg to 50 Kg bags. We make it two ways, Kate and Abkesh. In kate be just wash the rice before cooking. This makes the rice very delicious but clumpy. For when we have guests, we use the Abkesh method which Adam also mentioned it in the video. We wash it and boil it for several minutes and then transfer it to a new pot to finish it. In Abkesh method, you can make awesome tahdig!!
First of all, I think you've nailed it most of way in this video. Great video. I just have two things to say. This one is going to be long, so apologize for that in advance. 1) I suspect you already know this because you mentioned the word short grained rice, but short grain rice is typically much stickier than the long grain type. However, whether the cooked rice ends up more clumpier or not really doesn't rely on the remaining free starch as much as it does on how much water you use and how you cook it (the amount of oil you use and how long you fry it can change the outcome as well) . And while you bundle all Asians or East Asians in one group, the Japanese are probably the only people who predominantly prefer short grain rice and serve their rice in a clumpy and yet fluffy compound. And yes, in most Asian traditions, rice is prepared with more water compared to European dishes like paella and risotto, but where as most Asian culinary traditions tend to scoop away the starchy (gluey) water during the boiling process, the Japanese never do that, or in fact, they never even take off the lid (it's forbidden). Of course nowadays, all this is done by pushing a button on an electric device, so not too many people even care. And because the electric rice cooker has spread from Japan to areas like South Korea and China, the standard of cooked rice has kind of become much alike in these areas in recent years. If you don't have a rice cooker, it might be handy to have one, since you seem to have deep interest in rice dishes. 2a) About the sake making process Prof. Wang mentioned. Yes, the process starts from grinding the rice down a lot, but whereas Prof. Wang said 50%, it's not always that high of a percentage (yet sometimes even higher). The common sake are usually ground only 20-25%, whereas the high end "gingko" or "ginjyo" types starts from 50% and up. The most expensive sake sometimes grinds uo to 70%. The lower percentage sake has more "umami" but also has a subtle but distinct sake smell, whereas the "gingko" types have less "umami" but have a fruity or flowery aroma with a sweeter touch to the flavor. 2b) The rice used to make sake is different from the every day rice we eat. If you closely look at a rice, you'll probably see a little bit of a white core within the more translucent substance surrounding it. When you want to choose good rice to eat (eg. Koshihikari) , the smaller the core, the better the rice is. The most high end rice have almost no core at all. On the other hand, if you want to make good sake, the larger the core, the better. Such brands of sake rice are the likes of "Yamadanishiki", "Miyamanishiki", "Omachi", "Gohyakumangoku" and so on. 2c) When we grind rice there are two procedures. The procedures aren't different in itself but the first step is to remove the germ and bran. We call the powder consisting of ground germ and bran "nuka", and we use it for various purposes such as the base to start fermentation to make vegetable pickles called "nuka-zuke" or simply as forage for livestock, etc.. The second step we only see when making sake. The resulting ground rice powder is called "shinko", and it is used to make "dango" and "manjyu" and the sort (basically ingredients for Japanese traditional sweets). So, the rice grinding process in Japan leaves little to be wasted. Lastly, I'd like to mention that in Japan, most people still wash their rice, but some of the younger generation have started to skip the process. Stores sell brands of rice labelled "musenmai" meaning "rice you don't need to wash" which are a little bit more expensive than regular rice. However, I personally do not wash my rice at all, and it's been fine all my adult life, although my mother would roll her eyes if she witnessed that! (BTW, I'm a guy in my 50's)
As a South Korean living in rural areas, washing rice is important, especially in these places. Not only to clean up the rice, also to get rid of bugs like Moths and Weevils. As a kid i had to get them off a bowl one by one, let alone it was mostly difficult to store rice indoors
this is very interesting! i heard stories from my parents about how they sometimes found tiny stones in their rice if they did not clean the rice thoroughly (I'm south korean) I thought we didn't have this type of issue anymore these days but looks like we still have!
@Stirgid Lanathiel huh that's an interesting method! I come from indonesia and now living in taiwan. I'm so used to disgustingly dirty rice that can have anything from pebbles to mites so I don't think i can think of using the starch water to cook 😂 but my fam usually dump it on the garden to both water and fertilize the plants and I kid you not, sometimes I was too lazy to dump it out immediately so i left it as it is in a bucket. Within 8 hours it'll smell like rotten kitchen scraps which just proves that the rice rinsing water (at least for most indonesian rice) is very dirty and not very safe for consumption.
@Stirgid Lanathiel Either the farmer/manufacturer has very lenient QC or they just don't care. I mean, I can't complain cause it is very cheap. And ahahaha enamel damage. That's one way to put it. It's definitely an unpleasant surprise to find something crunchy in you mouth full of rice. Even worse, the pebble will almost always got ground up by the molars even if you stop right when u realize it's there. And then either you swallow the ground pebble rice or you have to spit everything and rinse. It's specially painful when that mouthful is the last bite of meat 😂
A Japanese grandmother kind of 'adopted' me and taught me to eat glutinous rice clean (no soy sauce). I learned to cook rice from her. I buy white rice in 10kg bags (Nishiki). I buy brown rice in 1kg bags (Lundsberg). If the brown rice is more than 30 days old, I do not buy it. I buy white rice at the Asian market and brown rice at the white people's supermarket. BTW we keep white rice in a small barrel. I store our potatoes (washed and dried) in the rice. Potatoes last longer that way without sprouting.
@@kurukuru4120 Your request is gentle and polite. That is rare on the internet. I shall not refuse you. However . . . . . . I am Texas born. Texans have a saying: Never tell a short story when a long one will do as well. So . . . It began when my girlfriend introduced me to sushi. She said, "Sushi is an acquired taste. You have to try it three times before you judge." It was not that way with me. I loved it from the first taste. I soon found a sushi shop I liked -- Atari Ya (that is, Hit Shop). I worked my way through the menu. I found that sushi lovers divide into two groups: those who like uni and those who do not. I do not. Those who do not like uni, like tako (octopus). I love octopus. I soon had my assigned stool at the bar and my designated itamai (sushi chef). My order was consistent: tako sashimi to gohan to miso shiro (octopus sashimi with rice and white miso soup). I visited Atari Ya at least twice a week, sometimes five times a week. I was also an officer of the local aikido club. As a club, we went out once a month to eat Japanese food. I was charged with booking the restaurant, selecting the menu, and negotiating the price. Guess which shop I picked. Despite my immersion into Japanese culture, I still ate like a gaijin (foreigner). I put soy sauce on my rice. The owner of Atari Ya employed his own mother. She served gohan to o-cha (rice and tea). One evening after I had my service of tako sashimi and had dirtied my rice with soy sauce, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I looked into the smiling, sweet face of Oba-san (grandmother). With a smile and a twinkle in her eyes, she said to me, "You come here often. You must learn to speak Japanese. You must learn to eat Japanese." She smiled bigger, patted me on the shoulder, and left. I turned back to my tako and dipped it in my mix of soy sauce and wasabi paste. (FWIW tako in the US and tako in Japan are different. US tako is steamed. Japanese tako is not cooked.) I bit into the tako and chewed my way through it. Had enough wasabi on it to give me that sinus rush that required me to center, close my eyes, and control my breathing to keep from crying. Once I had beaten the wasabi and was riding the endorphin rush, I opened my eyes and turned to pick up my rice bowl. The 'dirty' rice was gone. In its place was a bowl of 'clean', white rice. Oba-san had swapped my rice. Still a gaijin, I dirtied my rice again and ate. Later, when I turned back to my rice, I found a new bowl of clean rice. I turned to look to the rice cookers. Oba-san stood there, hands behind her back, smiling at me. She returned my gaze and bowed. Not a big bow. Just a head nod. This tug of war went on for weeks. In the end, Oba-san won. I learned other things from Oba-san. I do not practice Japanese daily, so my Japanese is not good. I still know my Japanese manners and still eat my rice clean. I still love tako. Other things have fallen aside from lack of use. But I never forgot the lesson of the rice and the way of the gentle Oba-san. Sleep well Kuru Kuru, and pleasant dreams. You have your bedtime story.
@@hlynnkeith9334 As a fellow Texan who had a biological Japanese grandmother, you're lucky she didn't chase you around trying to beat you with a sandal. :D Kidding, enjoyed your story.
@@DennisBLee Glad you enjoyed it. You know, I never knew Oba-san's name. She never told me. But she cared for me like I was her son. Once when I entered Atari-Ya, there was not a seat open. All the tables and all the places at the bar were filled. Oba-san came running from the back of the house to greet me and showed me to my regular place. She insisted that all the customers at the bar scoot down to make room. She had the bus boy bring a tall chair from the back and seated me. The guy next to me said, "You must be some customer!" I just smiled.
Little treasure like this are always hidden in the corners of youtube. Thanks for the story! I oughta go out and have sushi, although I have no idea whats good or anything
Hi Adam! Thank you for your great video regarding washing or not washing of rice (except for the commercial part). I am writing you from Germany. I never used to wash rice in my life and had always good results. However, in recent years, here it is recommended to wash rice because of arsenic. I do that but have never the same good results as beforehand when I did not wash the rice. You gave me that idea of boiling the rice as pasta. For me it seems this way to get rid of arsenic is a better one than washing before cooking.
Personally I believe it has a lot to do with the particular species of rice you're getting. In east Asia where I live, local rice tend to become clumpy no matter how I wash and/or soak it (which is convenient for chopstick users); whereas when I studied abroad in UK, the rice I bought from Sainsbury's / Tesco have a tendency to loosen up with the exact same preparation methods. I'm not an expert though, so this is just personal experience. Your mileage may vary.
so i’m pakistani and my mum loves using basmati rice which i believe is a long grain rice but we moved to tanzania and basmati rice is p expensive and we eat a lot of rice everyday. we started buying the local rice which is grown in the mbeya region of tanzania. it’s around short to medium grain but it’s very very dirty. now i’ve never not washed my rice and i actually spend around 20 mins just washing my rice. basmati rice is imported here and is generally less dirty but mbeya rice is almost always v dirty. i wash my rice in batches and v thoroughly but that type of rice never gets not sticky? i can’t imagine how clumpy it would be if i decided to add extra starch and make it clumpy on purpose. i would not trust the rice until ik it’s clean mainly because something in me says there’s an issue even if i moved to a western country but here it’s a sanitary issue so i have to clean it.
The uncle roger thing is suppose to be a joke stop crying please its really, really rude Edit: calling him out for entertaining other people with a different sense of humor and calling him cringey... isn’t that cringe? Literally just stop. If you don’t like him, thats fine. If you’re going to call him out in such an annoying manner just don’t. Yes i know what I’m saying is rude too but I can’t stand these people Edit 2: OH MY GOD STOP “@pikaぴかちゅ BUT HOWBOUT THIS BUT HE DID THIS BUT HE IS THIS” SHUT UP AND STOP HARASSING HIM BECAUSE HE JOKINGLY HARASSED SOMEONE ELSE SARCASTICALLY AND STOP HARASSING ME IM FKING SLEEP DEPRIVED AND PISSED Edit 3: STOP YELLING AT ME ABOUT THIS AND THAT CRAP IF YOU DONT LIKE HIM ITS FINE BUT WHY DO YOU FUCKING EXPECT HIM TO BE SOME DIVINE BEING THAT NEVER DID SOMETHING WRONG SHUT THE FUCK UP I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT UR CRAP IM ACTUALLY PISSED
I’m surprised no one mentioned that rice was often covered with talc (at least in Japan) which was done to make it look whiter. That’s the reason we had to wash our rice. Talc can cause cancer. I ‘m not sure if talc is still used, but I never outgrew the habit.
Actually, it isn’t the talc that causes cancer, but serpentine asbestos, which has the same basic chemical formula, but non-carbon groups are attached differently, so the serpentine forms the long chain silicas that cause cancer when breathed, especially by smokers.
In Egypt we eat rice very often and it's considered a huge part of our lunch at home. Most of our foods are usually boiled in stock. We boil chick or beef with and onion or a carrot or a hot green pepper and a bit of seasoning like salt, black pepper flakes, bay leaves and etc (it's a choice of what you like). To take the stock to the next level we toast crushed garlic in butter or ghee with a bit of seasoning and throw it into the stock to make a much more flavourful stock. We use this stock to make the rest of our dishes and rice. Most of us get our rice in sealed plastic bags but depending on the disributer sometimes the NEED to be washed. We begin cooking the rice by toasting some of our washed rice it with a bit of ghee or oil (make sure to cover the pan with it so it doesn't stick) untill it starts to brown but not burn. We toss in some vermicelli pasta to toast with the rice in the pan. After the vermicelli and the rice get toastedwe put in the remaining rice and stir it in the pan just to make sure the get cover in a bit of oil (U can add oil if the pan gets dry because that would burn the rice) Then go in with the stock till you cover the rice and a bit more. Put the lid on and leave it go cook. When it's done you have a great tasing rice. We wash the rice oce or twice to git rid of the starch because there is pleny of fat/oil use in the cooking process and the stock so we don't get clumpy or overcooked rice. We like the seperate grins but still cooked properly.
On draining, one thing I would add is the fact that Asian, especially whom eat rice everyday, use rice cooker now. You can drain nothing with rice cooker. Even if you boil your rice (not using rice cooker), with finger method to determine the water quantity, you will have nothing to drain. The water will become steam or be absorbed by the rice. However, Basmati is an exception. On washing, even the Basmati rice is washed and soaked in water in Indian culture. It is indeed strange to make asian fried rice with unwashed-drained rice. From my personal (or family) experience, if the rice is not washed, it will be yelowish in color and more prone to stale/rancid. As we eat rice three times a day, it is preferable to eat washed rice. It's a really interesting video with a lot of new perspective for me, especially on the european rice dishes. Really love your work!
@@sillysad3198 i mean it makes sense if you've never wash rice before and you don't encounter any problems with it and feel it's unnecessary (this is coming from an asian and i do wash rice)
Me, an East Asian: *raises pitchforks *Watches video After watching video: *slowly lowers pitchfork "I'm watching you, Adam," while wondering what the heck risotto is
I never heard of washing rice until well, Adam Ragusea ! I recently tried a steamed rice where the instructions were “wash 4 to 5 times”. It produced the best rice I’ve ever made. The pasty texture of risotto and paella is why I dislike them. Why would anyone be nasty over how you prefer you rice!
Here in Panama I would not want to eat unwashed rice. Most of the time you also have to pick through it before washing to get out the small stones, hulls, unhulled rice, and even bugs. However, my home ec teacher in the US always taught us that we should never wash rice because it's fortified in the US and you'd wash away the vitamins. Here, it's definitely not fortified, so there is no reason NOT to wash it.
Actually, you can wash your flour! By washing the flour you can separate soluble starch and gluten. In my hometown there's a famous dish using starch washed from flour making cold noodles and then the gluten was fermented and steamed with a lot of bubble traped inside like a bread. The texture is amazing.
I actually remember a film of Margaret Thatcher (the UK Prime Minister in the early 1980's) on the BBC doing this trick in her home sink with a flour dough under a running water tap. She was demonstrating science. Apparently she was also the scientist who invented whipped ice cream - introducing loads of air and so charging so much more money for a volume of ice cream rather than its original weight.
@@Drew-Dastardly That Thatcher invented soft serve ice cream is a bit of a myth, she worked for a while at the company who introduced soft serve to the UK, and is thought to have helped improve it, but the process was invented much earlier and had been on sale long before she joined the company.
In my home town we make dish that is this paste made from the starch. The gluten is thrown away. I tried many times to explain to my grandma that that's protein and nutritious but she just wouldn't believe me. She inssists traditional way is the correct way
Adam: "People *used to* get flour weevils a whole lot!" me: "haha yeah, good thing we've all advanced since then..." *looks at the truckload of weevils crawling in and out of my kitchen pantry*
I don't know where you live but my family always stored spearmint gum in our bulk items like flour, rice and sugar. While it's not poisonous to bugs, the strong scent is an effective repellant. Historically, Mint was grown interspersed throughout gardens as a way to protect other plants from insects. Just take a stick of gum (my family uses Extra brand though idk how important that is) and bury it within your grain, making sure it's dispersed enough throughout it. As far as I know, no flavors are leeched and if you accidentally scoop some out, just put it back in.
I've only had this problem a single time but I've never looked at my rice the same since. To be fair, no amount of washing will make me willingly eat bug-contaminated rice.
Put your flour and stuff in glass or plastic containers when you buy it. If you bought it without weevils, it will keep them out. If you bought it with weevils, they may suffocate, depending on how often you open the container.
Brown Rice from Walmart notoriously has moths (silk-building butterflies with chewing mouth parts). Freezing does not kill all (some wake up again). Before use, you definitely want to wash it. You may also find some stone bits sinking to the bottom.
@@jerryrobinson7856 Not necessarily: the less treated the food, the more bugs you get. The video even shows that rice (and other grains) stored in fabric or open is naturally attracting critters. Do you see the lady walk barefoot on the grains? You know what SW Asian streets are like, and how "impure" feet are considered in many cultures? I want to wash that rice! I do Look Before Buy, Buy &Freeze or Buy & Prepare. One way to keep critters out is extreme dry storage (like those corn silos and granaries) or a nitrogen atmosphere (zero oxygen). Some food is radiated with gamma rays (e.g., most spices and nuts to kill Aspergillus, kills also the baby weevil grubs). Vacuumed and sealed bags are an option. Once normal air can access, or the bag is punctured, the bugs get in; already in the store.
@@damnbro_idc put a cup of rice on a pot with a little bit of hot oil, fry it until it gets a white ish color, then add 2 cups of water, i use a “chicken broth” that comes in a dust form and i add some salt as well, then put the lid on and leave it cooking at the lowest flame you can and leave it alone until there’s no water if you want “ arroz rojo” which is rice with a tomato sauce follow the same recipe but you’re gonna fry the rice until it gets a soft brown color, be careful not to burn it just toast it, then youre gonna blend 3 tomatoes half an onion and some salt, add 2 cups of that sauce (you can add water to the sauce if its not enough) instead of the water and cover it until there’s no liquid. i dont know if you understood me, im not that good writing in english
Actually some Korean soup recipes specifically call for "rice water", which is the water from the rinsed rice (typically recipes specially call for the 3rd washed rice water. Ie. Water left over after rinsing rice 3 times). Supposedly the starch in the water helps bring out the flavor.
Thanks! Lots of good info! I prefer brown rice too but I usually parboil for 5 mins, drain, and finish cooking the traditional way using an equal part water as rice with a lid - according to research that's sufficient to remove arsenic - so many ways to cook rice!
I love how he's not mad at people's disgusted reactions to his shrimp scampi rice cooking methods, he just wants to know why. Stay curious, man. Great explanation to a question I had myself after watching Uncle Roger, HAIYA.
Adam I had recently been to an Asian home where the hostess walked me through traditional Chinese cooking and she soaked and washed the rice to make a dish. I was mortified as I never thought to wash, rinse and soak and rinse again as she did. Thank you for covering all the bases. Her food was terrific and made me reconsider my rice prep. You gave all the other information I was going to hunt for. Thank you!
I'm from a traditional Chinese home. My parents always wash and rinse rice before cooking. My dad asked the rice sellers, importers. they stated there is a minuscule wax coating over the rice. This is to keep rice from sticking, forming clumps. Hence the reason to wash some of this coating off. You'll notice a cloudy white water as your washing rice. Guess what's causing the cloudiness?
Really interesting video! Thank you so much for this. Nigerian here, and we're a very huge rice consuming nation. We do have traditional African rice, but interestingly enough, that's not even a fraction of what we generally consume. We eat imported Asian rice, and that's what we use to make our staples, like jollof rice. I reckon it's the same for other African countries. But what's even more interesting is that even rice that Nigerians consider to be native to us, many times isn't native to even Africa. Take for example, Ọfada rice. It's actually a medium grain rice that is grown in Abeokuta, Ogun State. But it's an Asian variety of rice brought by WW2 soldiers back to their hometown. Many Nigerians believe it's a native to us, but it isn't. And yes, we wash our rice. Even before we started widely consuming imported Asian rice, back when oil money was plentiful, from the '70s to '80s, Nigerians consumed Uncle Ben's. And I may be wrong but that's not the kind of rice you need to wash. But perhaps because we already had a culture of washing rice before then, as well as picking out stones, and so on, so it's just a habit that we still have till this day. And it's a habit that has served us well because many families now can't afford the kind of pre-packaged rice Americans eat. We buy Asian rice that's stored in sacks and sold by measuring "derekas" or Italian tomato paste tins. Again, thank you for this lovely video. I've learnt so much.
This video is insanely good. Such an amazing discussion from a casual theme, resuming to a "depends on where you live and where your rice comes from", astonishing.
Incredibly well done video, very educational, very broad, and well researched. Congratulations. I wash my rice to remove the starch always, but if i want it to be more like paella, i add more water and leave it to cook for a little bit longer.
Me, looking at the recommendation: "Is Washing rice really necessary?" Hmm. That sounds interesting. WAIT!!! It's 16 minutes long? SIXTEEN MINUTES? How can you possibly talk about washing rice for sixteen minutes? Me, after watching the video: That was one of the most interesting and informative sixteen minutes of my life. I learned a lot!
Cooking rice like pasta is an interesting method, but I am a slave to the sunk cost fallacy and thus will continue using the rice cooker i bought until it breaks.
The rice cooker easily doubles as a steamer as well, assuming you have one with that thimble on the opening that creates the pressure within the rice cooker.
@@anirudhviswanathan3986 Yes, those kinds of rice cookers are super useful and interesting. It's great to have vegetables which you may end up serving in or adjacent to the rice cooking at the same time.
The steamer is very versatile. I use it to make multi-day bone broth I use it as a steamer I even use the "keep warm" function alongside the open lid steamer to incubate yogurt
I have pressure cooker where the pot can separate, idk about you but no reason to not start the rice in the pot on the stove, pasta style, then insert the pot into the cooker and have perfect toasty rice
This is amazing! My mother-in-law who was a Burmese lady basically taught me how to cook with spices and rice. She told told me to always wash the rice until the water was nearly clear, and then boil in a shed-load of water until "it's nearly done but not quite". Then you drain it, and put the rice pot under a cloth to finish cooking in its own steam for a couple of minutes.
I had to leave tbe other day before my rice cooker was done, so I unplugged it, and it finished under its own steam. I was surprised it was perfect when I came back.
That's how it's traditionally done in south India. The starchy water is fermented and used in other dishes and it is also used with clothes so they can be stiff after drying. With pressure cooker, electric cookers being available, we don't do that any more but when large quantities have to be prepared this is the method they would use
@@saiki4116 now that you mention it, I never realised that back when shirts had to be stiff and people used "amidon" (starch in French), it probably was literal starch at some point in history!
I couldn't quite grasp your comment at 15:30: "I don't use rice often, so I don't bother soaking..." How does how often you do it impact which steps you take or skip? I was hoping for soaking pros and cons, but I guess that's a different video. I like to use long-grain brown rice. I soak 1 C rice in 2.5 C water, for 1 hour or longer. I boil it, then low heat in that same pot, covered. I use visual and audible clues to detect when done. Then heat off, but do not open lid. After 1 hour of cooling, one may transfer to another container, fluffing as you go. The second container gives up heat and moisture for 1 hour. I think I still retain all the arsenic, but I retain the vitamins in the germ, and the free starch. I get fluffy and clumply!
Just as a point of perspective on the whole "cloth bag" method of buying rice in bulk. This is how our house buys most of our rice. We go down to one of the local Asian food markets we're fortunate enough to live near, and buy 50 lb bags of rice. And you're absolutely right; it sits around for quite a while as we slowly eat it. A 50 lb bag takes us somewhere in the neighborhood of a year for my and the wife to eat. We live in the US, for reference. However, here's the thing. No matter what price point those bags of rice sit at (they range in the shops where we go from ~$30-50 for a 50 lb bag), the bags aren't typically cloth. They're a woven plastic material, usually, with an "impermeable" plastic bag integrated into the structure. And even the truly cloth bags still have that plastic bag lining the inside of them. I'm sure this isn't the case everywhere in the world, but the brands we buy, which are almost certainly shipped in from around the world, predominantly from Asian countries, all utilize this "inner lining" method, likely to prevent oxidation and rancidification of their product. All that said, we still transfer the rice to one smaller container for immediate use (I believe it's about a gallon, plastic and airtight), and secondary, much larger (also plastic and airtight) container for longer-term storage. Because yeah, even the higher-quality stuff, even in the comparatively airtight bags it comes in, isn't perfect, and will go rancid. Like the Good Doctor said, we as a species are very sensitive to the odors given off by rancid food. It doesn't take much at all to kick in that gag reflex. Edit: and yes, we wash our rice before cooking. Because we're not making Paella or risotto.
I wouldn't be surprised if the plastic lining component is related to some FDA requirement. Even imported stuff has to follow the rules to be legally sold.
@@octorokpie That's a good point. Who knows? I know that places like China, Thailand, and Vietnam have been on my "wish to see before I die" list for a long time. Maybe I'll scope that out when I eventually make, if for no other reason than to satisfy curiosity.
I'm from southern Louisiana, and we cook much more rice than pasta down here. Gumbo, Jumbalaya, Étouffée, Stew, and Red/White Beans all have rice as a main component. When cooking something like a Pork Roast, rice is also the main side dish in order to soak up the juices. My family has never really washed their rice because a sorta sticky and almost mushy rice tastes really good in those types of dishes. My experience may not exactly reflect all of the other people down here, but from experience, most families do the same.
My rice has rocks in them sometimes. I live in a poor country and a lot of the more affordable rice have tiny bits of rocks, similar to the size of rice. They hurt like hell. One minute you're enjoying a nice breakfast meal, then the next you shatter your molars.
Excellent video! I've cooked rice both washed and unwashed...I go back and forth because I noticed when I wash it, it gets mushy. I don't mind sticky or fluffy...just don't like mushy. I go for very slightly al dente so that when it is reheated it's not mushy. I don't eat rice very often because of the starch content/high carbs. I also heard that it has arsenic a few years ago and that is another reason to avoid it. If I try it again in the near future I may try the pasta method. Thanks for sharing!!
The type of rice being cooked also determines how sticky it will be. I'm from Hawaii and we use calrose rice, it's kinda like sushi rice. If you don't wash the starch off before cooking it becomes kind of pasty. I love my rice to stick in clumps, like Adam claimed to like his rice, but I don't like it pasty. Jasmine rice and basmati is fluffy/not pasty without washing and then becomes super fluffy and doesn't stick at all when you wash it. However, short grain rice needs a rinse to keep it from turning into glue.
My dads from Hawaii and we always have a giant bag of Calrose rice. And yeah if you don’t wash it it turns to SCHLOPP. Which is still kinda yummy. Sometimes if I’m feeling a little spicy I’ll wash it only once or twice lol.
Calrose is all we ate growing up in Hawaii, and from a 50lb bag, and always washed it, and always used a rice cooker. It's probably the purest expression of rice I've ever tasted. As soon as Adam pulled out at the 1lb vacuum packed brown Jasmine rice, and started cooking it in a pot with butter, I just laughed. Imagine two scoops of that in a plate lunch! Humbug
I love calrose rice, often using it for sushi with some vinegar (and sometimes leftover pickled beet juice vinegar cause I am crazy like that). For people who like starch, you can add starch back in after washing it, For people who don't you don't add starch back in after washing it Win Win
Interesting! Do you mean that unwashed even brown calrose rice is pasty, but unwashed white basmati rise isn’t? Or is calrose rice usually white rice? We only use brown rice and don’t rinse it, so this whole video is blowing my mind, haha
The taste, consistency, texture and smell of rice changes dramatically based on how you cook it. Washing it and cooking it "pasta style" and then steaming it (like Iranians do) really can make results very very different. It's mostly about how you want your rice to taste. For people who eat rice as a stable this matters a lot. And for others I'm sure they can tell the difference when presented with rice cooked this way.
@@Santa-614 Waat?! Of course I do! Why do you automatically presume me to be some sort of savage! Who told you this about me? Who have you been talking to?... And how did they find out...?
To be super honest, the biggest differences in rice for me had nothing to do with washing and everything to do with the type of rice and the quality of it. Back in the day my parents used to buy the cheap packet rice stuff and that clumps EVERY TIME. Years later I pretty much never used the packet rice anymore (or at least took it out of the packet to cook it), but even when I washed it, the rice was lumpy as shit. Wash it more = lumpy. Wash it less = lumpy. Don't wash at all = lumpy. I just tested around for a while and finally ended up finding certain brands of long-grain parboiled rice, that DON'T stick like a motherfucker and I don't need to wash that rice for that, either. And I just use the basic "cook 3 minutes, take off heat, cover, wait 20 minutes" technique. To be honest, all the testing requirements have put me off buying any other kind of rice, because that process is just boring and also rather pricey. I don't wanna have to buy 10 different varieties of basmati to finally find one that doesn't clump and break.
@@dowfreak7your technique may be a bit basic. Basmati will cook well almost without effort. But with lower grade rices (like the ones I use since Basmati is hard to get) technique becomes super important. At this point I often prefer the lower quality rice over Basmati because it can taste better when cooked just right. There's a lot of art in getting it right. (I speak of a simplified Persian steaming technique.. not the boil dry technique Westerners often use)
The way you cook your rice is called a "riz pilaf" in france. Start browning a little your rice in a pan, add just the right amont of water (and you can add some more ingredients, like sliced onions, some peas, mushroom etc....). And boom ^^ I never washed my rice (I'm a frog eater as you have guessed...) I like my rice a little sticky, I usualy cook it under hot water / pression.
I was thinking the same thing when I got to that point in the video, it's just rice pilaf (which we eat in the US, too, and it's pretty much the de facto way to eat rice here so I'm actually kind of surprised he didn't just call it that if he went through the effort of referring to Risotto and Paella).
My grandmother taught me to fry and brown the unwashed rice in some oil or clarified butter. Then put twiced as much water in the pot/pan, let it cook till the water is gone and the rice is done. I'm German and so was my grandmother. This is how I still love cooking my rice and it is delicious.
My friend is Filipino and was quite appalled when I told her I never heard about washing rice before. It makes sense now that I know how different the culture surrounding rice is in other countries. I always think about it when I follow cooking instructions on my basmati or sticky rice, but all these years later and I have still never actually bothered to wash it.
This is, legitimately, an amazing video. Your voice and style is not only fun to watch, but putting it on autoplay and listening to this in the background works very well. Love the vids.
Because it always does. People just want to be right and condemn anyone that disagrees. Rather than be open to new or different ways to do things. Welcome to 2023
@@TedBarton91 I love when internet dingdongs run their mouth...and look like complete morons. Not only did I already use the word ALWAYS in my comment...but it's sarcasm to welcome someone to the current year. As if they just woke up from a coma. Are YOU 10? Welcome to basic English.
I find it strange. I mean the rice needs to be washed but everything else is ok? Like flower, cereals, pepper and tea? If I would find anything in a pack of food that does not belong there - especially weevils - I would throw away the whole container probably lol
1:30 some of our ingredients are now so clean, that some foods don't really work right anymore without a good bit of clever thinking. One example is cheeses. Specifically the ones with lots of holes in them. The holes are gas bubbles that form during the ripening process. As the handling of milk got ever more mechanised, there were ever fewer and smaller holes in the cheese. Swiss scientists went looking for the missing holes and found that small impurities, like haydust, are mostly absent from milk harvested by milking machines. So, many cheesmakers have taken to adding hay dust to their cheese.
100% right about clumpy rice. I use super high quality Japanese rice, but still rinse it thoroughly for the best texture (if I don’t, it gets SO clumpy). Properly rinsed Japanese rice has such a nice texture, like each grain sort of stands on its own, while still being sticky enough But yea for risotto, absolutely no rinsing
This was so interesting!! I'm Korean and lived a better part of my life in the States but I still wash rice out of pure habit. I've had those rice that said 'don't wash it' but still do anyway in fear that my mom will somehow magically figure it out and smack my back lol
Of course, the unwashed rice make the rice cooker dirty more easily and hard to wash If your mom doing the dish she will upset with extra unnecearies cleaning times
@@chin258456 if you wash it right away it makes no difference, if you wash it later the rice itself is already super hard to wash out, unless you soak it, in which case again, the starches are no problem
I always skip in-video ads; BUT and However, I LOVE, LOVE My MISEN knives and pans. It is simply and affordably the best I've bought. I am very glad I discovered it several years ago. As to washing rice, I am American, I married a Chinese and we buy rice in 25# sacks of Jasmine rice from Taiwan (it's only the two of us or we'd buy 50# sacks). (Fun Fact, while we live in the USA my wife refuses US rice) And we cook and eat a lot of rice, almost daily (unless there's noodles for dinner). We use a Zojirushi rice cooker and store in a Japanese 25# capacity rice storage bin. I ALWAYS wash the rice, usually 3 times using the forceful sink sprayer.
I think many people don't consider that it depends on the dish itself. Unwashed rice does change the dish. So if you are preparing a dish from a culture that does wash their rice you should wash it (especially sushi rice). Some things like washing rice should be situational.
@@vsm1456 no. Sushi rice is milled specifically to bind and absorb the flavors of the rice seasoning. When you don't rinse rice it creates a glue like substance which is great for risotto, but horrible for sushi and other dishes.
Check out the book Cookwise. It's basically exactly what you're looking for. She also wrote a few other books that focus on particular areas like baking, I think called Bakewise.
When I was little, in the Philippines, I also saw people toss their rice in these large flat baskets to sort out impurities like rocks and hulls. I think the act of tossing it repeatedly also helped remove some of the hulls that were still stuck.
its kind of a dying practice in ph nowadays. you'll only really see the poor do it now since they buy sub-quality rice, my mom who comes from a poor background (even though her dad was rich) also does the same thing today even though shes much more well off now and buys quality rice from japan. but none of my friends do it, i'd say most millenials just wash it and dont toss their rice in a basket like their parents did.
Yes, we used to do this too. Its called Winnowing. This video explains why it isn't done anymore. We don't do it anymore because the Aspirator machine does what manual winnowing does.
Since I moved to USA, I quit washing rice because I don’t want to lose the fortified stuff in it. We didn’t fortify our rice in the Philippines period. I never heard of the word (fortification) until I moved in US.
i have used free starch from rice mixed with water to fix textures in sauces if they got messed up, there can still be impurities in rice though, but if you're in the EU, the rice packets usually say whether or not to wash before cooking, i always wash my basmati rice 2 times.
@Winston Smith definitely the microwave. Good things happen when you put metal in the microwave. Particularly when they also have batteries that can explode
Great video as usual Adam, however one point you didn't cover is that unwashed rice tends to boil over in a rice cooker. I'm guessing because the unwashed free starches make bigger bubbles which stack onto each other, but I'm no food scientist. I just know if I don't wash my rice I'm going to end up having to clean up rice juice from the outside of my rice cooker and probably a little bit on my countertop.
That is certainly a problem for all rice-cooker users. This might be a bit of a shock, but there are countries and peoples that don’t have rice-cookers and have never felt the need for one. On the other hand, when I was taught to cook rice, a 100 years ago, I was told not to rinse it because 1) the rice is pre-cooked, and 2) it washes away the nutrients they add to fortify the rice. So now I’m at a conundrum: whether to eat enriched or less sticky rice. Lol
When I was living in Korea, my grandma used to send me brown rice from her rural town which is full of taste but also has some unwelcome sand grains. I've washed it thoroughly, at least twice. Now I'm living in Japan and my main dish is Saitama white rice. It isn't likely to have dirt, but has significantly more starch residue than, say, Akita rice probably due to different varieties or hulling processes. Couldn't change my decade-old habit, I still wash rice twice, but I often use the starchy water from the second wash to thicken soup.
Washing rice or not washing rice, we can all agree that we shouldn't wash rice after cooking it to avoid the wrath of Uncle Roger.
Damnnn First on a Justin Y Comment.
bro how do u comment on every video bruh
bro its Justin Y.
I agree Mr Ninja
haven't seen you in a while, how goes it?
As a Filipino, it’s really strange to me that there are people who don’t have a huge sack of rice in their homes
I'm from Pakistan and I feel the same way
@@abdulmannanbabar8020 I guess because for you guys it's the same thing that bread is to us in the west.
i’m jamaican and we do this as well :)
@@mccaylawhite8900 OK I'll bite. Why does washing rice work for you? Would you recommend it?
I´ve adopted this habit some years ago despite the fact that my diet is not based mostly on rice. I buy ten kilos, then I put it in glass jars with a tight lid to prevent any contamination and I am good to go for some time. It is cheaper, it prevents unneccessary packaging and in any case you have the amount you need in consistent quality. In many countries the sack of rice is also like a life insurance. You know you have something to eat the next months, even if you don´t have income for whatever reason, or food is out of stock.
Ya, but have you ever tried power-washing your rice?
never thought I'd see hand tool rescue here
Power washer is the quickest way to descale a fish - change my mind.
More like a quick soak in some Evapo-Rust, I would have thought.
just put it in the washing machine between two sifters
Better be one of your next videos, if it is, you'll get my bell icon.
I’m Mexican, grandfather from Spain, we cook the rice same as you, lightly fried/toasted with onion, garlic and sometimes fideo pasta, then add liquid. I was confused too, thanks for clarifying that since I don’t recall my mom ever washing it, also since I tent camp a lot water is something you don’t want to waste washing rice, water is absolutely precious when camping. Thanks for the great informative video.
Strange, in my family who are from Jalisco and Michoacán always wash our rice, even when making Spanish rice.
I am from spain, in my house we always wash the rice to remove starch
i've never washed rice either. this is new to me too.
From Veracruz and we definitely wash rice.
Same here. Mom sometimes washes rice, but less so since she moved to the US. She told me when she was growing up in rural Mexico that it was necessary due to the reasons mentioned in the video, but since moving here she doesn’t do it all the time unless for a specific reason.
“I would encourage you to think about whether someone else’s rice is in any way a threat to your rice” my man just said philosophy on our asses
"said"? Huh?
Ok, Dr Wang is literally overpowered when it comes to being a rice expert. A three tiered expert (traditional, educational and industrial).
like a undergrad thesis with only one source and citation lol Grade: F
@@kaidanalenko5222 11:33 “fortificant”. Even auto correct doesn’t know that word.
@@TheBooban are you criticizing or supporting the other comment? Cause fortificant is an actual word...
@@kevinsmithgaming fortificant is too academic that even autocorrect doesnt know
@@kaidanalenko5222 We forgot that a doctorate backed by a decade of education isn't enough to communicate information 🙄🙄🙄. You're not reading a thesis, you're attending a class.
Here in the Philippines, I occasionally bite into tiny pebbles when my rice isn't washed properly. Which is probably why rice fortification did not work here. Washing rice was necessary.
Also the bugs crawling in the rice lolllll. I don't think not washing rice would work for us considering local farmers will dry their rice on the side of roads and it gets debris in it 🤷♀
@@slot_machine My rice doesn't have rocks or bugs in it, but it has too much starch for my rice cooker, so I have to wash it anyway I think.
if you still buy rice from sack or small brand not mass brand that use multi-milion tool, you still have to wash rice
but i still wash my rice even i buy from mass brand because of starch.
Its common in Philippines to fine small those tiny rocks if you don’t wash it properly
@@shawnkay5462 Do you think it's because of what the rice went through from the farm to you?? When I was in Viet Nam the farmers would spread the rice on half of a two lane rural road. When dried in the sun they swept it up with a broom. I don't know about the Philippines but with American grown rice that's not done. It doesn't touch the ground after being harvested in the field.
Adam, I just love how thorough and open minded you are. You don’t judge what “best”, just share what you’ve managed to learn.
Thank you.
This was the video I never knew I needed to watch as an Asian growing up in Asia. I've always low-key judged people who don't wash their rice, but I'm humbly reminded that rice also grows outside of the continent. It should be and is a beautiful thing that rice are grown and prepared differently on the other part of the world. Maybe I'll try cooking some western recipes with rice!
Arroz com feijão é top
@@enricomeirelles2304 Eu acho que ele não entende nossa língua não mano.
@@user-rx9ny4yo2e arroz com feijão é top
@@enricomeirelles2304 eu sei
the reason i dont wash my rice here in the southeaster united states is because when i do wash my rice the grains becomes a sort of mush but if i leave it alone and just cook it it turns out firm and depending on how much water you use you can get it a sort of al dente texture to it.
I stopped washing my rice a year ago and I gotta say, the money I'm saving on detergent sure adds up.
😂😂😂
I hope you are kidding 😂
@@BangkokBonkers
He's not joking. It's his early days of trying to fit in with the humans.
@@GaussianBluff 😆🤣😂😂😂.......👍😁
I know this must be very funny but I am missing the joke.
Found a pebble in my rice once. My dentist bought a new TV.
this, ohhh man...
This comment killed me 😂😂😂😂
Good thing I don't live there. The cost of dental services here doesn't cost as much as a TV, unless you're considering getting braces.
@@triadwarfare you have some really expensive TVs over there.
@@karu6111 wtf 🤣
Born in Japan, raised in Hawaiʻi, my family's preferred rice variety was medium grain sticky rice from California. Back then during the whole of the 1960s, and into the early 1970s the rice came covered in a talc powder which kept the rice dry, discouraged insects, and extended the shelf life. This talc had to be washed off before cooking and eating. Not sure when the rice processors stopped using talc, but glad they did.
I'm glad they did, too! Especially now that we know about asbestos contamination in talc. It's now being removed from cosmetics and baby powder for that reason.
@@phantomkate6
Just so you know... they're not removing the talcum powder from baby powder. They're changing the refinement and testing for it to make sure asbestos isn't in the powder. Any baby powder that you buy that does not *_expressly point out_* that it's "talc-free" still has talcum powder in it.
@@matchesburn yes I know all of this, thanks
@@phantomkate6 well it would have been nice if you said that in your original post instead of having to have someone else explain it. Its not good to tell only half the story.
@@TheBitter73 I didn't realize I needed to spell out the definition of 'contamination,' since I thought it was common knowledge and we're on the internet anyway. Sorry.
This video made me understand the importance of food science for the first time. I used to think food science mostly as a chemist making synthetic flavors. But the knowledge of all the different facts of rice provided here made me open my eyes and be fascinated by it. Thank you.
Thats how I felt when I first watched Food Science years ago...check it out! Great show!
For real I always see cook as a chemist...
But more into food creating chemist...
Brazilian here. Was taught to wash and sometimes even soak your rice. I like non-sticky rice, it's what I grew up with, so it's a must for me.
de onde ce é? nunca tinha ouvido sobre lavar arroz antes de tentar fazer comida japonesa 🤔
yeah we do eat a lot of rice, the classic non sticky white rice combined with beans is basically a pattern you will always see in brazilian dishes
persians do the same
This. My mom ALWAYS washed our rice before cooking it.
@@m_poeishell ya Beans with rice
Back in '60s when I learned to prepare rice from my mother, rice was coated with talc. Besides being Japanese and preparing rice as her mother had taught her (wash until the water runs clear, soak for hours, then cook), my mom said she didn't like the idea of eating talc. She was ahead of her time, as we know now that ingesting talc has been associated with stomach cancer.
Rice is not coated in talc and was not done so in the past either. Stop believing internet myths as truths.
Now that's real wisdom from the older days before Internet and widespread knowledge of science
Packaging and extra packaging is additional cost which will always be downloaded to the end consumer. As an end consumer, why spend more on the same item when you can spend less on the item with less processing and less cost attached?
i buy my rice from japanese suppliers and i still find tiny stones or pebbles or coagulated blobs of rice in it from time to time, so of course im gonna wash it thoroughly (unless im making sushi then that starch is necessary so i sift it instead or wash only once) and a habit that i personally do and most japanese restaurants also do for large batches of rice is to put all of the cooked rice onto a basket and shuffle it with a rice spoon to fluff it up and let it dry faster, adding seasoned rice vinegar if the batch is meant for sushi/nigiri or rice balls.
i find that no matter what brand i buy even if its the incredibly expensive imported rice from the states (im from southeast asia so importing from the other side of the world is practically highway robbery) i always always find stones/pebbles or bugs at least 5 times a year. and thats enough to do lasting damage to the body over the course of decades. so i just do what my mom taught me and always always wash my rice.
i should add that as of may 2022 i've already found 7 foreign objects in my imported high quality rice, and its not even halfway through this year yet. a possible reason why i found much more this year than i usually do is because the health & quality standards for produce has dropped a lot during the pandemic to meet the scarcity of many nations lacking basic goods, particularly in most of asia. so it honestly doesn't matter where in the world your rice comes from, you should still wash it.
also most filipinos can tell the difference between fake rice and real rice, and while the poor generally dont care and eat it regardless, the well off will absolutely not buy that garbage. why? because in recent years a lot of counterfeit rice dealers have been selling poly-cellulose based fake rice to people for virtually nothing, which have created a lot of new problems for the country because poly-cellulose is indigestible (its fecking plastic). so they have to force these fools to puke it all out, or perform surgery to remove it from their stomach.
another reason is because most people here feckin hate it when our rice, bread, and whatever else is enriched or fortified by artificial chemicals, minerals, and vitamins like bromine and riboflavin, mainly due to disgust of seeing people overdose multivitamins and suddenly suffer from illnesses caused by vitamin overdose. like the case of a person who consumed a full bottle of vitamin-d softgel tablets and died 8 hours later due to vitamin-d toxicity induced hypercalcemia.
@@chloekaftan Sushi should have no starch on the rice grains. You might want to reevaluate where you get your information from.
Grandma and mom always washed their rice before cooking and browned/toasted it slightly to add some flavour prior to adding water for cooking. Just discovered this channel, this is awesome, you're doing a great job!
"Is washing rice really still necessary?"
I felt a great disturbance in asia, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror
We wash rice because of the same reason we peel pau skin we don’t trust the workers who touch it after giving their balls a good scratch I’m not even joking
@@bruhbruhin_a_sling7775 my mom said if you don't wash your rice it will smell after coocing
@@bruhbruhin_a_sling7775 i wash my rice cuz there is a lil bit of dust in the rice
@@bruhbruhin_a_sling7775 Agreed. Fuck not washing rice.
Ok in india everyone does it. Remember Asia is not a identity from isis terrorist to Chinese to Mongolian to Siberian to India belong to same continent
I grew up in Japan, and while I will always wash my own rice (due to tradition and personal preferences), you make great points and I entirely agree with those points. Keep being awesome.
I grew up in America
@@LemurJackson so have a lot of my friends, did you have a point to this reply?
You can wash rice like pandan rice and it gets individual and fluffy. You can wash japanese rice and it still stays sticky. Proof that washing rice is superior :P
@@KerupukKeju you didn’t get the point of the video 😿
@@LemurJackson damn i didn't
Asian grandma and mother tells me to do so, so I do it.
It is the law
They spancc when i don
They even let me wash eggs
This is also why I’m against gay marriage
We wash in africa too idk how it started
The world's largest rice mill is in my city in Arkansas. An absolute crap ton of rice is grown and processed in my area. We've never washed rice, but the packaging usually specifies not to.
On a neat side note, some company is opening a commercial scale sake brewery in Arkansas. They even have local farmers who are growing traditional Japanese sake rice varieties.
"all the types of bread seem to coexist just fine"
shows Bagels
Me: "ah yes, bagels. the least contentious bread product."
New York doesn't make the best bagels
**turns off notifications and runs away**
We can at least usually agree store bought pre sliced bagels are tolerable, yet not great.
@@chestersnap GET BACK HERE!!!
@@chestersnap Well, Montréal does
Homemade Bagels are always better than store bought
For some reason, I really liked those map shots with the handheld camera.
Me too
Why are people on UA-cam able to make presentations with a wealth of information like this in under 20 minutes but professors at my university can't make a lesson nearly this engaging and easy to absorb and dense in information....
Well. A youtube video you personally clicked becuse you felt like it. And tbh. You (i done it thousand of Times) prob started a video and x seconds into it went meeh. And stopped watching
Soo its really not a fair comparision
Adam is picking especially interesting topics on purpose, if his channel was more like a university degree and tried to teach you EVERYTHING you need to know, you'll have a lot of boring videos about things you won't care about at all.
There's a difference between being forced to learn something and voluntarily learning something.
your professor has 2 hours to put a class together. Adam has 2 months.
Another thing to take into account is the quality of the rice. Even though I've being cooking mostly the same brand of long white rice for years their quality has shifted a lot. At first it didn't contain a lot of free starch and it was great to cook without washing just by using the exact amount of water. I don't know what they did, but the amount of free starch grew a lot. If you try to cook it like that now, by the time the grain is done, the rice will be stuck in a jelly like texture. If you try to cook it like pasta without washing the starch will grow on top of the water until it falls from the pot; if you let the lid on it gets even worse. You even need to wash it around 10 times to get almost clear water out of it. For me both methods are valid, though for the first one you need a decent rice.
I do find the concept of rice being sold in small plastic packages in small serving sizes to be utterly alien to me. Along with instant rice products. It's too drilled into my head that rice comes in big sacks. At the same time I'm totally fine with instant noodles, so eh.
That said I ignorantly tried to make Paella once with washed rice and it wasn't very pleasant. I was also using the wrong type of grain on top of that.
Same!! 😂
Instant rice is garbage
Same with potatoes for my country. If it is main carb in diet, it makes sense to buy a lot more
Jaja
This is what I've experienced too, it's just habit to buy big plastic or cloth sacks of rice to then store, wash and cook in a rice cooker for like five days at a time.
"This is a very culturally charged topic"
Asians: Yes. Yes it is.
Hello there. Wasn't expecting you here too. I'm starting to feel that either our tastes in UA-cam videos are extremely similar, or that you're just an omnipotent being lurking out in comments section on UA-cam
You and Justin Y. are here damn
@@manishprasad1298 I think were on the same page here
@@jiekendinner were? Or do you mean "we are"?
Yes
As an Indian, it was interesting that an american educated me why Indians wash and drain rice. Honestly i didn't know about this and i am sure there are many who don't, even to this day. Thanks a lot Adam 😊
Man, this guy is an idiot. Never take cooking lessons from an American. Ever. Your great evidence is just one paper that's not peer-reviewed. People write papers on anything and everything. That's not evidence.
I was also shocked to hear East Asians don't drain their rice! Any East Asians in here, what do you do with the remaining water? Do you boil it off? Do you chug it like Badlands drinking the ocean?
@@BreakdancePeach there's no extra water...only pour in exactly what is required for the rice
@@BreakdancePeach I believe many / most East Asians use rice cookers to prepare their rice. The rice and cooker specify exactly how much water to add so there isn't any remaining.
Interesting because I usually purchase premium rice imported from India that doesn't require washing.
Thanks for a reasoned explanation about washing or not. I'm in the US and generally do not wash it. I also do not drain it. I almost always make rice in my instant pot cooker and there is usually no water left to drain.
I'm from America and don't have anyone from Asia in my family, I've always washed my rice to get the starch coating off
Nice
You must be asian race
@@yasminenazarine1629 Don't read too good, do you?
Why do u have to throw in no one in ur family is asian
What's this got to do with asian race 🤔if you don't have asian family but you're from other race land run away hole in America
99.999 % third world country Rafggies migration always says who they're what they're I feel sorry fir you you poor run away hole
Growing up in Spain, I had never heard of washing your rice. Then, after moving to my own place in the UK and exploring other cuisines, I kept reading that you should wash your rice for both East Asian and Southeast Asian recipes, so I did because that's what the recipe called for. Now after watching your video it makes more sense: the unique texture of paella comes precisely from unwashed rice and the binding properties of free starch, while the fluffiness in curries and stir fry rice comes from having washed your rice and removed the sticky free starch.
Knowledge is tasty
Well here in the Philippines we washed it too for paella..And it still bind like unwashed, This guy in the video already said it rice is a solid starch either you wash it or not it will still bind when cook...The only difference is with unwashed it taste a little bit earthy and have distinct smell that is unappetizing to Asian..
actually I think it's more to do with water content. For example, fried rice is best made with day old, refrigerated rice bc it's drier that way, which is why some recipes suggest that if you don't have that, you should add less water to your rice cooker. The deciding factor really isn't whether you wash it or not; in older times ppl washed it bc it wasn't as clean as it is now and husks&dust may still be present.
Same here, never seen anyone doing it in Portugal
I wash my rice until the water runs clear because I don't like how starchy unwashed rice is after it is cooked.
As a predominant rice eater this is interesting to see
What’s interesinting mean
@@advlia686 what does that mean
I'd rather not discuss that lol and aas someone who gets clean rice it's interesting to see the point int the vid
interesting*
Leave him alone and btw middleeasterns aka people like me also have a rice as predominant side/dish so stop it with the sterotypes and all that bullshit
if you want rice that's "fluffier" or separate easily, go for basmati. it's my favorite rice primarily because of texture and more firmness. other premium rice like jasmine tend to be more "porridgy" for me and too soft even with less water.
Same, basmati's a great rice. It's pretty much the only one I buy non-organic, it has a 'cleaner' result.
that shit disgusting
@@kuryaku5906 I see i found fellow basmati understander folk :)
with basmati, I find it has to be washed a lot or else its extremely clumpy. For me usually I'll wash it 7 or 8 times and sometimes fry the rice beforehand as well, in order to get fluffy basmati.
I cooked mine with steam at 50% water and 50% rice and it's just fine@@ShaneCreightonYoung
Adam, how about a video on types of rice: jasmine, basmati, long grain, short grain, etc and where they are advantageous? I never realized washing rice was bad for risotto until you explained it.
There's even a restaurant hack to add _more_ free starch when cooking risotto to order: you blend cooked rice and water to a slurry in a high-powered blender, refrigerate it, and add it in small amounts together with the stock, to help form a strong emulsion (starch-fat-water bond) in the pan.
So did you just think you were bad at making risotto this whole time? Because there's no way you could have gotten the same creamy, luscious texture with your washed risotto rice than you would have gotten otherwise
@@raerohan4241 No, I only started washing rice this year. I started using jasmine as my go to rice and wash. I haven't made risotto since I did that. Back then, I was using brown rice. Without this warning, I would have made my next batch with jasmine and washed it.
Going back to your original comment@@juddvance7721 If memory serves the classic rice type for risotto is arborio.
Jasmine and Basmati rice are both long grain rice, there's really only 3 kinds of rices. Long, short, and medium (the "it's too short to be long and too long to be short" group). Jasmine and Basmati are probably the most famous long grained rice, along with the American white/brown long grain variants; arborio, valencia, and bomba rice (the stuff used for Risotto and Paella) are the most common medium grain rice; and short grain rice is actually extremely uncommon beyond some use in sushi (some sushi rice is short, some medium, it sort of depends. Sometimes short grain and medium grain rice are both called short grain (or medium) because actual short grain rice is so underutilized. The actual reason for why certain rices are better suited for certain preparations (i.e; Arborio or Valencia for Risotto or Bomba for Paella, and tbh either for both) is because certain rice cultivations tend to contain more free starches than others, or less. Arborio, Valencia, and Bomba tend to have a large amount of free starch and the shape of the rice lends itself best to those styles of dishes, whereas Jasmine tends to have less free starch and if you were to cook it into Paella or Risotto has a tendency to break during the cooking process because of how long it is compared to how wide it is (in terms of grain shape).
source: 15 years cooking, background in culinary arts education
Philippines: Let's start adding minerals to the rice's coating
Filipinos: Let's wash the rice 3 times first before cooking
nah I’m black lol
Me as a malaysian: I do that everyday
Yehe big brain
XD
@@NotFur-3
Me, a Singaporean: Same
I remember as a child in a remote village in Turkey we had to not only wash the rice but pick through it little by little, to pick out the little tiny rocks that were still inside. The whole process was very long and boring. But if you didn't do it, you could easily chip and crack your tooth when you had your next bite. You had to dump the rice on a flat surface, then like counting pennies get small individual bits of rice and move them to the other end of the table, picking out stones in the process. This was usually a family event where all the women and children would help do it together. After that, the rice would get washed thoroughly and left soaking overnight, and then the cooking would take place the next day. Now I can just put a bag of Uncle Ben's in the microwave for 2 minutes and I have rice. I had forgotten all about it until I watched this video.
My grandma used to give me the rice to read the tiny rocks, when I was a child. Same here
Hey just curious why were there rocks in the rice?
@@JTBCP They weren't cleaned properly I guess, sometimes there would be tiny black ones, they were easy to find, but other times there would be yellow-ish ones that would be a lot harder to find.
In Mexico we do the same but with beans
Always boring jobs on women!
Great video! I didn't know about the arsenic problem. I mostly buy Jasmine rice out of Thailand. But it's good to know. I figure each dish would require washing or not washing according to the cuisine. Just as the dish dictates whether you use jasmine, basmati, long grain or short grain rice. I hadn't heard of the"pasta" method of cooking rice before. Cool to know. I use a zojirushi rice cooker except for Mexican rice. Your videos are always very educational. Thanks for all the effort you put into them.
This reminds me of a story I heard about a recipe that called for cutting a chicken in half at the start. Turned out the reason for cutting the chicken in half was due to the size of the pot grandmother was using.
Yep this Italian granny with 1st gen parents-&1frm Est European(b4 ww2?)- whatever-but this kid has done his research(just sneak away&rinse that long grain rice)last month-got less starch- less tiny pebble'rocks' even hard broken ones-If the really old ones(over 79) freak at least check it or they may crack their dental plate- Hey Karma
Sure let American fall down dead with ARSENIC with their unwashed rice!!!
😂😆🤪😜🤣
Do some bloody research!!!
@@yokikokudou If you watch the whole video he gets to the arsenic problem by the end.
oh, I saw that as a turkey where the woman's mother told her to cut the legs off before cooking, because "her mother did that". They called granny, and the turkey didn't fit in the roasting pan with them on.
Yes, I've heard this story, but it was cutting the ends off a ham, which the grandmother had to do to fit it in her pan.
As a resident of West Bengal, India, since my birth have seen most people and my own family consume rice or rice based dishes multiple times almost everyday and this is the first time I'm learning many people Don't wash rice.
I get it now, but my instincts still makes me feel it's odd.
We wash it and also drain it. A lot of people also soak the rice after washing, allowing faster cooking times and insanely fluffy rice. And talking about nutrients, we have really cheap sachets of nutrient powder available that a lot of people buy and add in while the rice is boiling.
I have never seen foreign particles in my cloth bags of rice tho, those blowing machines Adam talked about... Rice is passed through those, or in very rural areas there is a manual process for that too... So we don't worry about that.
I have a big... BIG... BIIIIGGGGG... muscles!!! HAHAHA!!! What did you think I was going for? That's so DIRTY of you! GAGAGAGA!!! I am the funniest UA-camr ever! Maybe that's the reason why I have TWO (!!!) HOT (!) GIRLFRIENDS. Thanks for being alive, dear chab
@@AxxLAfriku dafuq
@@AxxLAfriku grüße von kannix
@@AxxLAfriku wtf
+
This is an amazingly clear and helpful video. No frills; just lots of information, presented in logical order with just the right amount of detail, and backed by an expert's knowledge and documented research. Thank you!
I agree amazing video, like all of Adam's video's smart and well put together!
I second that motion. Thankyou.
My mother growing up in Singapore in the 70s/80s always told us that they washed the rice growing up to get rid of the rocks and the weevils. In Australia (and probably also in modern Singapore) these aren't really issues you need to worry about, but I wash the rice anyway out of habit (and also because once or twice I HAVE found weevils and I don't want to risk it). Also, if you use brown rice there's often a few husks leftover in the rice and washing helps to get them out.
I’m Thai and I really do appreciate how you do all the research on rice from every culture. Tbh it doesn’t matter to me how anyone do their rice. Wash or not. Use scale, cups or finger method. As long as it’s your preference, it shouldn’t be anyone’s business.
Sure let American fall down dead with ARSENIC with their unwashed rice!!!
😂😆🤪😜🤣
Do some bloody research!!!
Unfortunately not every asian thinks and understand like you, some of us are embarrassing ignorants and expect everyone to eat and live how our ancestors did decades and centuries ago.
I appreciate your thinking too, @mintysnack, and you are very right. But I also appreciate Andrew’s research- I think because as a Pacific Islander, I’m curious to understand why should I wash my calrose rice when I’m planning to enjoy my Asian inspired dishes (sushi, musubi, conge etc…) versus not having to wash the rice I’m using for risotto which I really love just as much as any other comfort food.
But the research is really just too awesome in the end. Cheers from Guam.
I don't mind not washing rice, using scale, finger, or what not. Especially if I am not the one who eat it.
But serve me cooked rice rinsed with water, and I will politely decline that, thank you.
I'm from a traditional Chinese home. My parents always wash and rinse rice before cooking. My dad asked the rice sellers, importers. they stated there is a minuscule wax coating over the rice. This is to keep rice from sticking, forming clumps.
Hence the reason to wash some of this coating off. You always notice a cloudy white water after washing rice. Guess what's causing the cloudiness?
"I mean, think of all the different kinds of bread there are and somehow they're able to co-exist!"
*France has entered the chat*
Oh yeah
Y'all know we got the best bread
@@Dotaplayers33 I like Italian better.
@@KarmasAB123 Okay, you get a pass.
I prefer darker scandinavien types of bread or simple french white bread.
We do wash our rice here in Iran. Rice is in almost every meal we eat and we usually buy It in 20 Kg to 50 Kg bags. We make it two ways, Kate and Abkesh.
In kate be just wash the rice before cooking. This makes the rice very delicious but clumpy. For when we have guests, we use the Abkesh method which Adam also mentioned it in the video. We wash it and boil it for several minutes and then transfer it to a new pot to finish it. In Abkesh method, you can make awesome tahdig!!
How expensive are the 50 kg bags?
@@pablojp3498 A really nice bag of rice is almost 50 us dollars. But there are cheaper options.
First of all, I think you've nailed it most of way in this video. Great video. I just have two things to say. This one is going to be long, so apologize for that in advance.
1) I suspect you already know this because you mentioned the word short grained rice, but short grain rice is typically much stickier than the long grain type. However, whether the cooked rice ends up more clumpier or not really doesn't rely on the remaining free starch as much as it does on how much water you use and how you cook it (the amount of oil you use and how long you fry it can change the outcome as well) . And while you bundle all Asians or East Asians in one group, the Japanese are probably the only people who predominantly prefer short grain rice and serve their rice in a clumpy and yet fluffy compound. And yes, in most Asian traditions, rice is prepared with more water compared to European dishes like paella and risotto, but where as most Asian culinary traditions tend to scoop away the starchy (gluey) water during the boiling process, the Japanese never do that, or in fact, they never even take off the lid (it's forbidden). Of course nowadays, all this is done by pushing a button on an electric device, so not too many people even care. And because the electric rice cooker has spread from Japan to areas like South Korea and China, the standard of cooked rice has kind of become much alike in these areas in recent years. If you don't have a rice cooker, it might be handy to have one, since you seem to have deep interest in rice dishes.
2a) About the sake making process Prof. Wang mentioned. Yes, the process starts from grinding the rice down a lot, but whereas Prof. Wang said 50%, it's not always that high of a percentage (yet sometimes even higher). The common sake are usually ground only 20-25%, whereas the high end "gingko" or "ginjyo" types starts from 50% and up. The most expensive sake sometimes grinds uo to 70%. The lower percentage sake has more "umami" but also has a subtle but distinct sake smell, whereas the "gingko" types have less "umami" but have a fruity or flowery aroma with a sweeter touch to the flavor.
2b) The rice used to make sake is different from the every day rice we eat. If you closely look at a rice, you'll probably see a little bit of a white core within the more translucent substance surrounding it. When you want to choose good rice to eat (eg. Koshihikari) , the smaller the core, the better the rice is. The most high end rice have almost no core at all. On the other hand, if you want to make good sake, the larger the core, the better. Such brands of sake rice are the likes of "Yamadanishiki", "Miyamanishiki", "Omachi", "Gohyakumangoku" and so on.
2c) When we grind rice there are two procedures. The procedures aren't different in itself but the first step is to remove the germ and bran. We call the powder consisting of ground germ and bran "nuka", and we use it for various purposes such as the base to start fermentation to make vegetable pickles called "nuka-zuke" or simply as forage for livestock, etc.. The second step we only see when making sake. The resulting ground rice powder is called "shinko", and it is used to make "dango" and "manjyu" and the sort (basically ingredients for Japanese traditional sweets). So, the rice grinding process in Japan leaves little to be wasted.
Lastly, I'd like to mention that in Japan, most people still wash their rice, but some of the younger generation have started to skip the process. Stores sell brands of rice labelled "musenmai" meaning "rice you don't need to wash" which are a little bit more expensive than regular rice. However, I personally do not wash my rice at all, and it's been fine all my adult life, although my mother would roll her eyes if she witnessed that! (BTW, I'm a guy in my 50's)
As a South Korean living in rural areas, washing rice is important, especially in these places. Not only to clean up the rice, also to get rid of bugs like Moths and Weevils. As a kid i had to get them off a bowl one by one, let alone it was mostly difficult to store rice indoors
this is very interesting! i heard stories from my parents about how they sometimes found tiny stones in their rice if they did not clean the rice thoroughly (I'm south korean) I thought we didn't have this type of issue anymore these days but looks like we still have!
Protein enriched rice
Seems to me you are trowing away a lot of protein xD
I live in a pretty urbanized part of Canada but sometimes I still get bugs in my rice-
thats primitive.
catch it instead
Another reason why we wash the rice: the starch water will burn on the bottom of your preferred cooker. They’re a pain to wash off.
Correct
I use rice water to clean fruis,veggies
@Stirgid Lanathiel huh that's an interesting method! I come from indonesia and now living in taiwan. I'm so used to disgustingly dirty rice that can have anything from pebbles to mites so I don't think i can think of using the starch water to cook 😂 but my fam usually dump it on the garden to both water and fertilize the plants and I kid you not, sometimes I was too lazy to dump it out immediately so i left it as it is in a bucket. Within 8 hours it'll smell like rotten kitchen scraps which just proves that the rice rinsing water (at least for most indonesian rice) is very dirty and not very safe for consumption.
@Stirgid Lanathiel Either the farmer/manufacturer has very lenient QC or they just don't care. I mean, I can't complain cause it is very cheap. And ahahaha enamel damage. That's one way to put it. It's definitely an unpleasant surprise to find something crunchy in you mouth full of rice. Even worse, the pebble will almost always got ground up by the molars even if you stop right when u realize it's there. And then either you swallow the ground pebble rice or you have to spit everything and rinse. It's specially painful when that mouthful is the last bite of meat 😂
Have you ever like get off the water? Like mann... It is basic....
A Japanese grandmother kind of 'adopted' me and taught me to eat glutinous rice clean (no soy sauce). I learned to cook rice from her. I buy white rice in 10kg bags (Nishiki). I buy brown rice in 1kg bags (Lundsberg). If the brown rice is more than 30 days old, I do not buy it. I buy white rice at the Asian market and brown rice at the white people's supermarket.
BTW we keep white rice in a small barrel. I store our potatoes (washed and dried) in the rice. Potatoes last longer that way without sprouting.
Excuse me, I am very interested in your story of being "kind of 'adopted'" by a Japanese grandmother.
Mind telling us a bed time story?
@@kurukuru4120 Your request is gentle and polite. That is rare on the internet. I shall not refuse you.
However . . .
. . . I am Texas born. Texans have a saying: Never tell a short story when a long one will do as well.
So . . .
It began when my girlfriend introduced me to sushi. She said, "Sushi is an acquired taste. You have to try it three times before you judge."
It was not that way with me. I loved it from the first taste.
I soon found a sushi shop I liked -- Atari Ya (that is, Hit Shop). I worked my way through the menu. I found that sushi lovers divide into two groups: those who like uni and those who do not. I do not. Those who do not like uni, like tako (octopus). I love octopus.
I soon had my assigned stool at the bar and my designated itamai (sushi chef). My order was consistent: tako sashimi to gohan to miso shiro (octopus sashimi with rice and white miso soup). I visited Atari Ya at least twice a week, sometimes five times a week.
I was also an officer of the local aikido club. As a club, we went out once a month to eat Japanese food. I was charged with booking the restaurant, selecting the menu, and negotiating the price. Guess which shop I picked.
Despite my immersion into Japanese culture, I still ate like a gaijin (foreigner). I put soy sauce on my rice.
The owner of Atari Ya employed his own mother. She served gohan to o-cha (rice and tea).
One evening after I had my service of tako sashimi and had dirtied my rice with soy sauce, I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. I looked into the smiling, sweet face of Oba-san (grandmother). With a smile and a twinkle in her eyes, she said to me, "You come here often. You must learn to speak Japanese. You must learn to eat Japanese." She smiled bigger, patted me on the shoulder, and left.
I turned back to my tako and dipped it in my mix of soy sauce and wasabi paste. (FWIW tako in the US and tako in Japan are different. US tako is steamed. Japanese tako is not cooked.) I bit into the tako and chewed my way through it. Had enough wasabi on it to give me that sinus rush that required me to center, close my eyes, and control my breathing to keep from crying. Once I had beaten the wasabi and was riding the endorphin rush, I opened my eyes and turned to pick up my rice bowl.
The 'dirty' rice was gone. In its place was a bowl of 'clean', white rice. Oba-san had swapped my rice.
Still a gaijin, I dirtied my rice again and ate. Later, when I turned back to my rice, I found a new bowl of clean rice. I turned to look to the rice cookers. Oba-san stood there, hands behind her back, smiling at me. She returned my gaze and bowed. Not a big bow. Just a head nod.
This tug of war went on for weeks. In the end, Oba-san won.
I learned other things from Oba-san. I do not practice Japanese daily, so my Japanese is not good. I still know my Japanese manners and still eat my rice clean. I still love tako. Other things have fallen aside from lack of use. But I never forgot the lesson of the rice and the way of the gentle Oba-san.
Sleep well Kuru Kuru, and pleasant dreams. You have your bedtime story.
@@hlynnkeith9334 As a fellow Texan who had a biological Japanese grandmother, you're lucky she didn't chase you around trying to beat you with a sandal. :D Kidding, enjoyed your story.
@@DennisBLee Glad you enjoyed it. You know, I never knew Oba-san's name. She never told me. But she cared for me like I was her son.
Once when I entered Atari-Ya, there was not a seat open. All the tables and all the places at the bar were filled. Oba-san came running from the back of the house to greet me and showed me to my regular place. She insisted that all the customers at the bar scoot down to make room. She had the bus boy bring a tall chair from the back and seated me. The guy next to me said, "You must be some customer!" I just smiled.
Little treasure like this are always hidden in the corners of youtube. Thanks for the story! I oughta go out and have sushi, although I have no idea whats good or anything
Hi Adam! Thank you for your great video regarding washing or not washing of rice (except for the commercial part). I am writing you from Germany. I never used to wash rice in my life and had always good results. However, in recent years, here it is recommended to wash rice because of arsenic. I do that but have never the same good results as beforehand when I did not wash the rice. You gave me that idea of boiling the rice as pasta. For me it seems this way to get rid of arsenic is a better one than washing before cooking.
Personally I believe it has a lot to do with the particular species of rice you're getting. In east Asia where I live, local rice tend to become clumpy no matter how I wash and/or soak it (which is convenient for chopstick users); whereas when I studied abroad in UK, the rice I bought from Sainsbury's / Tesco have a tendency to loosen up with the exact same preparation methods.
I'm not an expert though, so this is just personal experience. Your mileage may vary.
so i’m pakistani and my mum loves using basmati rice which i believe is a long grain rice but we moved to tanzania and basmati rice is p expensive and we eat a lot of rice everyday. we started buying the local rice which is grown in the mbeya region of tanzania. it’s around short to medium grain but it’s very very dirty. now i’ve never not washed my rice and i actually spend around 20 mins just washing my rice. basmati rice is imported here and is generally less dirty but mbeya rice is almost always v dirty. i wash my rice in batches and v thoroughly but that type of rice never gets not sticky? i can’t imagine how clumpy it would be if i decided to add extra starch and make it clumpy on purpose. i would not trust the rice until ik it’s clean mainly because something in me says there’s an issue even if i moved to a western country but here it’s a sanitary issue so i have to clean it.
Definitely. Jasmine Rice is particularly sticky.
Yes, short grain rice are sticky. Longer grain rice are not as sticky
I am your polar opposite, as a UK citizen in Singapore my rice cooking process was a mess for a while years ago. Haha. Now we have videos like this!
Parboiled rice is less sticky.
You can tell Adam is a former journalist because this was insanely informative and balanced. Loved the Uncle Roger critique too.
And also really well researched
That dude is seriously annoying with his shtick
I thought I was the only one who found Uncle Rogers annoying AF, and I'm so glad at him being called out.
The uncle roger thing is suppose to be a joke stop crying please its really, really rude
Edit: calling him out for entertaining other people with a different sense of humor and calling him cringey... isn’t that cringe? Literally just stop. If you don’t like him, thats fine. If you’re going to call him out in such an annoying manner just don’t. Yes i know what I’m saying is rude too but I can’t stand these people
Edit 2: OH MY GOD STOP “@pikaぴかちゅ BUT HOWBOUT THIS BUT HE DID THIS BUT HE IS THIS” SHUT UP AND STOP HARASSING HIM BECAUSE HE JOKINGLY HARASSED SOMEONE ELSE SARCASTICALLY AND STOP HARASSING ME IM FKING SLEEP DEPRIVED AND PISSED
Edit 3: STOP YELLING AT ME ABOUT THIS AND THAT CRAP IF YOU DONT LIKE HIM ITS FINE BUT WHY DO YOU FUCKING EXPECT HIM TO BE SOME DIVINE BEING THAT NEVER DID SOMETHING WRONG SHUT THE FUCK UP I DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT UR CRAP IM ACTUALLY PISSED
@@caliorbustarika3310 Uncle Roger is just a character lmao, he's not actually like that
I’m surprised no one mentioned that rice was often covered with talc (at least in Japan) which was done to make it look whiter. That’s the reason we had to wash our rice. Talc can cause cancer. I ‘m not sure if talc is still used, but I never outgrew the habit.
That... sounds like something that should be *outlawed* if it isn't already. Food safety is serious business.
Actually, it isn’t the talc that causes cancer, but serpentine asbestos, which has the same basic chemical formula, but non-carbon groups are attached differently, so the serpentine forms the long chain silicas that cause cancer when breathed, especially by smokers.
YES ! I was wondering this too ! Anyone know ??.
@ You seem to be talking from experience.
Fyi scientific research has found that their is no definitive proof talc causes cancer.
In Egypt we eat rice very often and it's considered a huge part of our lunch at home. Most of our foods are usually boiled in stock. We boil chick or beef with and onion or a carrot or a hot green pepper and a bit of seasoning like salt, black pepper flakes, bay leaves and etc (it's a choice of what you like). To take the stock to the next level we toast crushed garlic in butter or ghee with a bit of seasoning and throw it into the stock to make a much more flavourful stock.
We use this stock to make the rest of our dishes and rice.
Most of us get our rice in sealed plastic bags but depending on the disributer sometimes the NEED to be washed.
We begin cooking the rice by toasting some of our washed rice it with a bit of ghee or oil (make sure to cover the pan with it so it doesn't stick) untill it starts to brown but not burn. We toss in some vermicelli pasta to toast with the rice in the pan. After the vermicelli and the rice get toastedwe put in the remaining rice and stir it in the pan just to make sure the get cover in a bit of oil (U can add oil if the pan gets dry because that would burn the rice)
Then go in with the stock till you cover the rice and a bit more. Put the lid on and leave it go cook.
When it's done you have a great tasing rice.
We wash the rice oce or twice to git rid of the starch because there is pleny of fat/oil use in the cooking process and the stock so we don't get clumpy or overcooked rice. We like the seperate grins but still cooked properly.
_I never knew rice could be such a heated topic._
LMAO
Well most rice is eaten hot so it always was a heated topic
it is NOT rice, the topic is not rice.
@@AJ-vs3yz hahaha this pun
@@AJ-vs3yz Nothing slips past you.
On draining, one thing I would add is the fact that Asian, especially whom eat rice everyday, use rice cooker now. You can drain nothing with rice cooker. Even if you boil your rice (not using rice cooker), with finger method to determine the water quantity, you will have nothing to drain. The water will become steam or be absorbed by the rice. However, Basmati is an exception.
On washing, even the Basmati rice is washed and soaked in water in Indian culture. It is indeed strange to make asian fried rice with unwashed-drained rice.
From my personal (or family) experience, if the rice is not washed, it will be yelowish in color and more prone to stale/rancid. As we eat rice three times a day, it is preferable to eat washed rice.
It's a really interesting video with a lot of new perspective for me,
especially on the european rice dishes.
Really love your work!
not washing a perfectly washable thing makes no sense, less than no!
@@sillysad3198 i mean it makes sense if you've never wash rice before and you don't encounter any problems with it and feel it's unnecessary (this is coming from an asian and i do wash rice)
Me, an East Asian: *raises pitchforks
*Watches video
After watching video: *slowly lowers pitchfork "I'm watching you, Adam," while wondering what the heck risotto is
Google Seinfeld risotto to see a funny clip.
Risotto is an Italian rice dish
@@firstnamemclastname5035 its also a jojo character
I only know Risottoro, which is one of Abroad in Japan's dearest friends. Haa, Risottoro...
south east asian gang where you at?
I never heard of washing rice until well, Adam Ragusea ! I recently tried a steamed rice where the instructions were “wash 4 to 5 times”. It produced the best rice I’ve ever made.
The pasty texture of risotto and paella is why I dislike them.
Why would anyone be nasty over how you prefer you rice!
Here in Panama I would not want to eat unwashed rice. Most of the time you also have to pick through it before washing to get out the small stones, hulls, unhulled rice, and even bugs. However, my home ec teacher in the US always taught us that we should never wash rice because it's fortified in the US and you'd wash away the vitamins. Here, it's definitely not fortified, so there is no reason NOT to wash it.
.... did your home ec teacher not get vitamins in the rest of their diet?
@@JB-fh1bb probably not that's why they have to fortify so many goods
Actually, you can wash your flour! By washing the flour you can separate soluble starch and gluten. In my hometown there's a famous dish using starch washed from flour making cold noodles and then the gluten was fermented and steamed with a lot of bubble traped inside like a bread. The texture is amazing.
oooh yes 凉皮 and 面筋
I actually remember a film of Margaret Thatcher (the UK Prime Minister in the early 1980's) on the BBC doing this trick in her home sink with a flour dough under a running water tap. She was demonstrating science. Apparently she was also the scientist who invented whipped ice cream - introducing loads of air and so charging so much more money for a volume of ice cream rather than its original weight.
@@Drew-Dastardly That Thatcher invented soft serve ice cream is a bit of a myth, she worked for a while at the company who introduced soft serve to the UK, and is thought to have helped improve it, but the process was invented much earlier and had been on sale long before she joined the company.
@@phildman132 "Thatcher invented soft-serve" seriously sounds like a Brit version of "Kim Jong-Il invented the hamburger"
In my home town we make dish that is this paste made from the starch. The gluten is thrown away. I tried many times to explain to my grandma that that's protein and nutritious but she just wouldn't believe me. She inssists traditional way is the correct way
Adam: "People *used to* get flour weevils a whole lot!"
me: "haha yeah, good thing we've all advanced since then..." *looks at the truckload of weevils crawling in and out of my kitchen pantry*
Free protein and fiber
I don't know where you live but my family always stored spearmint gum in our bulk items like flour, rice and sugar. While it's not poisonous to bugs, the strong scent is an effective repellant. Historically, Mint was grown interspersed throughout gardens as a way to protect other plants from insects.
Just take a stick of gum (my family uses Extra brand though idk how important that is) and bury it within your grain, making sure it's dispersed enough throughout it. As far as I know, no flavors are leeched and if you accidentally scoop some out, just put it back in.
I've only had this problem a single time but I've never looked at my rice the same since. To be fair, no amount of washing will make me willingly eat bug-contaminated rice.
Put your flour and stuff in glass or plastic containers when you buy it. If you bought it without weevils, it will keep them out. If you bought it with weevils, they may suffocate, depending on how often you open the container.
@@zviLikesTV any tips on how to get them out if their are already in
Brown Rice from Walmart notoriously has moths (silk-building butterflies with chewing mouth parts). Freezing does not kill all (some wake up again). Before use, you definitely want to wash it. You may also find some stone bits sinking to the bottom.
Thanks for sharing. It makes you wonder where to buy safe rice. Whole Foods?
@@jerryrobinson7856 Not necessarily: the less treated the food, the more bugs you get. The video even shows that rice (and other grains) stored in fabric or open is naturally attracting critters. Do you see the lady walk barefoot on the grains? You know what SW Asian streets are like, and how "impure" feet are considered in many cultures? I want to wash that rice!
I do Look Before Buy, Buy &Freeze or Buy & Prepare.
One way to keep critters out is extreme dry storage (like those corn silos and granaries) or a nitrogen atmosphere (zero oxygen). Some food is radiated with gamma rays (e.g., most spices and nuts to kill Aspergillus, kills also the baby weevil grubs). Vacuumed and sealed bags are an option. Once normal air can access, or the bag is punctured, the bugs get in; already in the store.
@ You make valid points.
In Mexico the rice is also toasted in oil or butter for a bit before adding liquid to cook it. It is delicious!
What's the dish called? I want to try it
@@damnbro_idc rice
@@damnbro_idc Frying rice like this is done in dishes like Spanish rice.
I had a friend from Mexico City who taught me her family recipe, toasting the rice while using a blender and sieve to make tomato water. So good.
@@damnbro_idc
put a cup of rice on a pot with a little bit of hot oil, fry it until it gets a white ish color, then add 2 cups of water, i use a “chicken broth” that comes in a dust form and i add some salt as well, then put the lid on and leave it cooking at the lowest flame you can and leave it alone until there’s no water
if you want “ arroz rojo” which is rice with a tomato sauce follow the same recipe but you’re gonna fry the rice until it gets a soft brown color, be careful not to burn it just toast it, then youre gonna blend 3 tomatoes half an onion and some salt, add 2 cups of that sauce (you can add water to the sauce if its not enough) instead of the water and cover it until there’s no liquid.
i dont know if you understood me, im not that good writing in english
"Why I wash my water, NOT my rice"
Still waiting for that video Adam.
LMAO IM DYINGGGG
Lol
LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lool
PTSD INTENSIFIES
Actually some Korean soup recipes specifically call for "rice water", which is the water from the rinsed rice (typically recipes specially call for the 3rd washed rice water. Ie. Water left over after rinsing rice 3 times). Supposedly the starch in the water helps bring out the flavor.
Kind of like using pasta water to thicken the sauce in a lot of Italian dishes I guess
Sounds like it can at least thicken things. That's cool
A bit like reserving some water from cooking spaghetti to add to bolognese sauce to thicken it?
I can't imagine there would be much starch left in the third wash.
@@ThreadBomb 😃
Thanks! Lots of good info! I prefer brown rice too but I usually parboil for 5 mins, drain, and finish cooking the traditional way using an equal part water as rice with a lid - according to research that's sufficient to remove arsenic - so many ways to cook rice!
aw. this is my mom (dr. wang) on here. glad to see her work get some publicity. ty.
@@Froggot until the water runs clear!
@@Froggot she said early in the interview that she does wash her rice simply out of habit from Hong Kong
I love how he's not mad at people's disgusted reactions to his shrimp scampi rice cooking methods, he just wants to know why. Stay curious, man. Great explanation to a question I had myself after watching Uncle Roger, HAIYA.
wait till the Rice Utensil War breaks out once Rice Washing War dies down
Adam I had recently been to an Asian home where the hostess walked me through traditional Chinese cooking and she soaked and washed the rice to make a dish. I was mortified as I never thought to wash, rinse and soak and rinse again as she did. Thank you for covering all the bases. Her food was terrific and made me reconsider my rice prep. You gave all the other information I was going to hunt for. Thank you!
@Matthew im sorry but your girlfriend not chinese then lmao
@Matthew maybe shes the 0.1% not washing rice because 99.9% of asians like myself wash it
I'm from a traditional Chinese home. My parents always wash and rinse rice before cooking. My dad asked the rice sellers, importers. they stated there is a minuscule wax coating over the rice. This is to keep rice from sticking, forming clumps.
Hence the reason to wash some of this coating off. You'll notice a cloudy white water as your washing rice. Guess what's causing the cloudiness?
@Matthew i don't know what else to tell you but it's not a regional thing. literally every asian washes rice lol
@Matthew i dont recall the op asking you to respond either lmao
I've noticed a huge difference in my rice cooking when I started washing my rice three times with cold water.
Really interesting video! Thank you so much for this. Nigerian here, and we're a very huge rice consuming nation. We do have traditional African rice, but interestingly enough, that's not even a fraction of what we generally consume. We eat imported Asian rice, and that's what we use to make our staples, like jollof rice. I reckon it's the same for other African countries. But what's even more interesting is that even rice that Nigerians consider to be native to us, many times isn't native to even Africa. Take for example, Ọfada rice. It's actually a medium grain rice that is grown in Abeokuta, Ogun State. But it's an Asian variety of rice brought by WW2 soldiers back to their hometown. Many Nigerians believe it's a native to us, but it isn't. And yes, we wash our rice. Even before we started widely consuming imported Asian rice, back when oil money was plentiful, from the '70s to '80s, Nigerians consumed Uncle Ben's. And I may be wrong but that's not the kind of rice you need to wash. But perhaps because we already had a culture of washing rice before then, as well as picking out stones, and so on, so it's just a habit that we still have till this day. And it's a habit that has served us well because many families now can't afford the kind of pre-packaged rice Americans eat. We buy Asian rice that's stored in sacks and sold by measuring "derekas" or Italian tomato paste tins.
Again, thank you for this lovely video. I've learnt so much.
This video is insanely good. Such an amazing discussion from a casual theme, resuming to a "depends on where you live and where your rice comes from", astonishing.
"is washing rice really still necessary"
as an asian, yes its really necessary if u dont want to feel the wrath of ur mom
then the Flight of Flip Flop
then the Coat Hanger shurikens
Burst Nugget - 😁😂😂😂
Same with my Caribbean people. 😆😆😆
@@RoseAngella Yeah. I got cussed by my mother for that, she even refused to eat unwashed rice 😥
@@burstnugget8225 I see you've met my mom.
Incredibly well done video, very educational, very broad, and well researched. Congratulations.
I wash my rice to remove the starch always, but if i want it to be more like paella, i add more water and leave it to cook for a little bit longer.
Me, looking at the recommendation: "Is Washing rice really necessary?" Hmm. That sounds interesting. WAIT!!! It's 16 minutes long? SIXTEEN MINUTES? How can you possibly talk about washing rice for sixteen minutes?
Me, after watching the video: That was one of the most interesting and informative sixteen minutes of my life. I learned a lot!
Exactly that's what I thought!! Right ..
16 / 16 / 16 / 16 / 16 - anomaly detected - kzzzkt -breach in progress...
Remember when that was always the case with the History Channel?
@Victor Murat Gettin learnt with Ricky. Ever see it on UA-cam?
Three minutes and I'm out! Not worth the time.
Cooking rice like pasta is an interesting method, but I am a slave to the sunk cost fallacy and thus will continue using the rice cooker i bought until it breaks.
The rice cooker easily doubles as a steamer as well, assuming you have one with that thimble on the opening that creates the pressure within the rice cooker.
@@anirudhviswanathan3986 Yes, those kinds of rice cookers are super useful and interesting. It's great to have vegetables which you may end up serving in or adjacent to the rice cooking at the same time.
Rice cookers are wildly effective and produce great rice. Don't stop.
The steamer is very versatile.
I use it to make multi-day bone broth
I use it as a steamer
I even use the "keep warm" function alongside the open lid steamer to incubate yogurt
I have pressure cooker where the pot can separate, idk about you but no reason to not start the rice in the pot on the stove, pasta style, then insert the pot into the cooker and have perfect toasty rice
This is amazing! My mother-in-law who was a Burmese lady basically taught me how to cook with spices and rice. She told told me to always wash the rice until the water was nearly clear, and then boil in a shed-load of water until "it's nearly done but not quite". Then you drain it, and put the rice pot under a cloth to finish cooking in its own steam for a couple of minutes.
I had to leave tbe other day before my rice cooker was done, so I unplugged it, and it finished under its own steam. I was surprised it was perfect when I came back.
That's exactly how my (Afghan) mother taught me how to make rice
That's how it's traditionally done in south India. The starchy water is fermented and used in other dishes and it is also used with clothes so they can be stiff after drying. With pressure cooker, electric cookers being available, we don't do that any more but when large quantities have to be prepared this is the method they would use
@@saiki4116 now that you mention it, I never realised that back when shirts had to be stiff and people used "amidon" (starch in French), it probably was literal starch at some point in history!
I couldn't quite grasp your comment at 15:30: "I don't use rice often, so I don't bother soaking..." How does how often you do it impact which steps you take or skip? I was hoping for soaking pros and cons, but I guess that's a different video. I like to use long-grain brown rice. I soak 1 C rice in 2.5 C water, for 1 hour or longer. I boil it, then low heat in that same pot, covered. I use visual and audible clues to detect when done. Then heat off, but do not open lid. After 1 hour of cooling, one may transfer to another container, fluffing as you go. The second container gives up heat and moisture for 1 hour. I think I still retain all the arsenic, but I retain the vitamins in the germ, and the free starch. I get fluffy and clumply!
Just as a point of perspective on the whole "cloth bag" method of buying rice in bulk. This is how our house buys most of our rice. We go down to one of the local Asian food markets we're fortunate enough to live near, and buy 50 lb bags of rice. And you're absolutely right; it sits around for quite a while as we slowly eat it. A 50 lb bag takes us somewhere in the neighborhood of a year for my and the wife to eat. We live in the US, for reference.
However, here's the thing. No matter what price point those bags of rice sit at (they range in the shops where we go from ~$30-50 for a 50 lb bag), the bags aren't typically cloth. They're a woven plastic material, usually, with an "impermeable" plastic bag integrated into the structure. And even the truly cloth bags still have that plastic bag lining the inside of them. I'm sure this isn't the case everywhere in the world, but the brands we buy, which are almost certainly shipped in from around the world, predominantly from Asian countries, all utilize this "inner lining" method, likely to prevent oxidation and rancidification of their product.
All that said, we still transfer the rice to one smaller container for immediate use (I believe it's about a gallon, plastic and airtight), and secondary, much larger (also plastic and airtight) container for longer-term storage. Because yeah, even the higher-quality stuff, even in the comparatively airtight bags it comes in, isn't perfect, and will go rancid. Like the Good Doctor said, we as a species are very sensitive to the odors given off by rancid food. It doesn't take much at all to kick in that gag reflex.
Edit: and yes, we wash our rice before cooking. Because we're not making Paella or risotto.
I wouldn't be surprised if the plastic lining component is related to some FDA requirement. Even imported stuff has to follow the rules to be legally sold.
@@octorokpie That's a good point. Who knows? I know that places like China, Thailand, and Vietnam have been on my "wish to see before I die" list for a long time. Maybe I'll scope that out when I eventually make, if for no other reason than to satisfy curiosity.
@_ David _ ok then don't
I'm from southern Louisiana, and we cook much more rice than pasta down here. Gumbo, Jumbalaya, Étouffée, Stew, and Red/White Beans all have rice as a main component. When cooking something like a Pork Roast, rice is also the main side dish in order to soak up the juices. My family has never really washed their rice because a sorta sticky and almost mushy rice tastes really good in those types of dishes. My experience may not exactly reflect all of the other people down here, but from experience, most families do the same.
fellow Louisiananian.
100% agree.
@@rider2513 Fellow Louisianan number two reporting in. Couldn't agree more
I'm from south louisiana too. I love when my rice is clumpy sticks together. I find it makes for a better texture.
im from southern louisiana (new Orleans) too!
Washing rice is probably too complicated a directive for most Cajuns 😂
My rice has rocks in them sometimes. I live in a poor country and a lot of the more affordable rice have tiny bits of rocks, similar to the size of rice.
They hurt like hell. One minute you're enjoying a nice breakfast meal, then the next you shatter your molars.
Same here. Philippines?
Does washing help removing these stones?
@@Seff2 washing removes the sand that was not removed by manual separation of stones.
in USSR we experienced stones in rice like absolute norm.
Even in the US, in loose beans sold in mexican markets can have stones too.
Source: am mexican.
Adds weight and volume, probably introduced for that reason.
Excellent video! I've cooked rice both washed and unwashed...I go back and forth because I noticed when I wash it, it gets mushy. I don't mind sticky or fluffy...just don't like mushy. I go for very slightly al dente so that when it is reheated it's not mushy. I don't eat rice very often because of the starch content/high carbs. I also heard that it has arsenic a few years ago and that is another reason to avoid it. If I try it again in the near future I may try the pasta method. Thanks for sharing!!
The type of rice being cooked also determines how sticky it will be. I'm from Hawaii and we use calrose rice, it's kinda like sushi rice. If you don't wash the starch off before cooking it becomes kind of pasty. I love my rice to stick in clumps, like Adam claimed to like his rice, but I don't like it pasty. Jasmine rice and basmati is fluffy/not pasty without washing and then becomes super fluffy and doesn't stick at all when you wash it. However, short grain rice needs a rinse to keep it from turning into glue.
My dads from Hawaii and we always have a giant bag of Calrose rice. And yeah if you don’t wash it it turns to SCHLOPP. Which is still kinda yummy. Sometimes if I’m feeling a little spicy I’ll wash it only once or twice lol.
Calrose is all we ate growing up in Hawaii, and from a 50lb bag, and always washed it, and always used a rice cooker. It's probably the purest expression of rice I've ever tasted. As soon as Adam pulled out at the 1lb vacuum packed brown Jasmine rice, and started cooking it in a pot with butter, I just laughed. Imagine two scoops of that in a plate lunch! Humbug
I love calrose rice, often using it for sushi with some vinegar (and sometimes leftover pickled beet juice vinegar cause I am crazy like that).
For people who like starch, you can add starch back in after washing it,
For people who don't you don't add starch back in after washing it
Win Win
Brown jasmine rice is the way
Interesting! Do you mean that unwashed even brown calrose rice is pasty, but unwashed white basmati rise isn’t? Or is calrose rice usually white rice? We only use brown rice and don’t rinse it, so this whole video is blowing my mind, haha
The taste, consistency, texture and smell of rice changes dramatically based on how you cook it. Washing it and cooking it "pasta style" and then steaming it (like Iranians do) really can make results very very different.
It's mostly about how you want your rice to taste. For people who eat rice as a stable this matters a lot. And for others I'm sure they can tell the difference when presented with rice cooked this way.
I don't wash my rice before I cook it; The farthest I will go is washing my bread before I toast it, but that's it!
@@Santa-614 Waat?! Of course I do! Why do you automatically presume me to be some sort of savage! Who told you this about me? Who have you been talking to?... And how did they find out...?
Pilafs are amazing
To be super honest, the biggest differences in rice for me had nothing to do with washing and everything to do with the type of rice and the quality of it.
Back in the day my parents used to buy the cheap packet rice stuff and that clumps EVERY TIME. Years later I pretty much never used the packet rice anymore (or at least took it out of the packet to cook it), but even when I washed it, the rice was lumpy as shit. Wash it more = lumpy. Wash it less = lumpy. Don't wash at all = lumpy.
I just tested around for a while and finally ended up finding certain brands of long-grain parboiled rice, that DON'T stick like a motherfucker and I don't need to wash that rice for that, either.
And I just use the basic "cook 3 minutes, take off heat, cover, wait 20 minutes" technique. To be honest, all the testing requirements have put me off buying any other kind of rice, because that process is just boring and also rather pricey. I don't wanna have to buy 10 different varieties of basmati to finally find one that doesn't clump and break.
@@dowfreak7your technique may be a bit basic. Basmati will cook well almost without effort. But with lower grade rices (like the ones I use since Basmati is hard to get) technique becomes super important.
At this point I often prefer the lower quality rice over Basmati because it can taste better when cooked just right.
There's a lot of art in getting it right.
(I speak of a simplified Persian steaming technique.. not the boil dry technique Westerners often use)
The way you cook your rice is called a "riz pilaf" in france. Start browning a little your rice in a pan, add just the right amont of water (and you can add some more ingredients, like sliced onions, some peas, mushroom etc....). And boom ^^
I never washed my rice (I'm a frog eater as you have guessed...) I like my rice a little sticky, I usualy cook it under hot water / pression.
I was thinking the same thing when I got to that point in the video, it's just rice pilaf (which we eat in the US, too, and it's pretty much the de facto way to eat rice here so I'm actually kind of surprised he didn't just call it that if he went through the effort of referring to Risotto and Paella).
@@Blissy1175 X'-D
My grandmother taught me to fry and brown the unwashed rice in some oil or clarified butter. Then put twiced as much water in the pot/pan, let it cook till the water is gone and the rice is done. I'm German and so was my grandmother. This is how I still love cooking my rice and it is delicious.
@@gabrieleghut1344 l
My friend is Filipino and was quite appalled when I told her I never heard about washing rice before. It makes sense now that I know how different the culture surrounding rice is in other countries. I always think about it when I follow cooking instructions on my basmati or sticky rice, but all these years later and I have still never actually bothered to wash it.
This is, legitimately, an amazing video. Your voice and style is not only fun to watch, but putting it on autoplay and listening to this in the background works very well. Love the vids.
i love how every episode on this channel concludes the same thing: it depends on what you’re making and what you’re going for
Because it always does. People just want to be right and condemn anyone that disagrees. Rather than be open to new or different ways to do things. Welcome to 2023
This channel is dedicated to informed decisions, not to tell you what to choose.
@@PinkoKane yes that is the joke in my comment
@@PinkoKaneare you 10? Worlds always been like that bud 😂 well, as long as we’ve been around. We’re complete pricks
@@TedBarton91 I love when internet dingdongs run their mouth...and look like complete morons. Not only did I already use the word ALWAYS in my comment...but it's sarcasm to welcome someone to the current year. As if they just woke up from a coma. Are YOU 10? Welcome to basic English.
"Is washing rice still necessary?"
Me who still manually picks up individual living weevils out of rice when washing it: "Ech I guess so"
If there are weevils, aren't there also white larva???
@@_Free_Thinker Extra unseen protein!
@@_Free_Thinker white larva, oh you mean microproteins?
I find it strange.
I mean the rice needs to be washed but everything else is ok?
Like flower, cereals, pepper and tea?
If I would find anything in a pack of food that does not belong there - especially weevils - I would throw away the whole container probably lol
@@1337Jogi I had ants in my cereal
1:30 some of our ingredients are now so clean, that some foods don't really work right anymore without a good bit of clever thinking. One example is cheeses. Specifically the ones with lots of holes in them. The holes are gas bubbles that form during the ripening process. As the handling of milk got ever more mechanised, there were ever fewer and smaller holes in the cheese. Swiss scientists went looking for the missing holes and found that small impurities, like haydust, are mostly absent from milk harvested by milking machines. So, many cheesmakers have taken to adding hay dust to their cheese.
100% right about clumpy rice. I use super high quality Japanese rice, but still rinse it thoroughly for the best texture (if I don’t, it gets SO clumpy). Properly rinsed Japanese rice has such a nice texture, like each grain sort of stands on its own, while still being sticky enough
But yea for risotto, absolutely no rinsing
It feels to me like you are just bad at cooking rice, I have never had that problem and I literally just use a rice cooker
This was so interesting!! I'm Korean and lived a better part of my life in the States but I still wash rice out of pure habit. I've had those rice that said 'don't wash it' but still do anyway in fear that my mom will somehow magically figure it out and smack my back lol
😂👌
Of course, the unwashed rice make the rice cooker dirty more easily and hard to wash
If your mom doing the dish she will upset with extra unnecearies cleaning times
@@chin258456 if you wash it right away it makes no difference, if you wash it later the rice itself is already super hard to wash out, unless you soak it, in which case again, the starches are no problem
@@bramvanderwoerdt7186
Dude the rice cooker meant to kept cooked rice for a long period
Do you ever have rice for every meal in your life?
I was taught to wash it from my french family to get rid of starches, taught by my korean family to wash it for hygiene
Personally, I prefer to put my rice in the oven for prolonged periods of time and then eat the charcoal.
Charcoal? I call it well done
are you trying to be funny?
Same!
Lol
use that charcoal to water your plants they will turn into apple trees
I always skip in-video ads; BUT and However, I LOVE, LOVE My MISEN knives and pans. It is simply and affordably the best I've bought. I am very glad I discovered it several years ago.
As to washing rice, I am American, I married a Chinese and we buy rice in 25# sacks of Jasmine rice from Taiwan (it's only the two of us or we'd buy 50# sacks). (Fun Fact, while we live in the USA my wife refuses US rice) And we cook and eat a lot of rice, almost daily (unless there's noodles for dinner). We use a Zojirushi rice cooker and store in a Japanese 25# capacity rice storage bin. I ALWAYS wash the rice, usually 3 times using the forceful sink sprayer.
I think many people don't consider that it depends on the dish itself. Unwashed rice does change the dish. So if you are preparing a dish from a culture that does wash their rice you should wash it (especially sushi rice). Some things like washing rice should be situational.
Shouldn't sushi rice be sticky and for that you'd rather not wash it?
100%
@@vsm1456 no. Sushi rice is milled specifically to bind and absorb the flavors of the rice seasoning. When you don't rinse rice it creates a glue like substance which is great for risotto, but horrible for sushi and other dishes.
ya, fried rice don't use unwashed rice, cause it will become sticky
@@vsm1456 There are other added binders to make sushi rice we so often see.
As a scientist (non-food science) and cooking enthusiast, I would particularly enjoy a basic cooking science book written by you, my friend.
A book eater I see.
Lance - this is what you are looking for: _On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen_ by *Harold McGee*
Why not a cooking book written by a food scientist or a chef-educator?
@@gomer2813 Bc Adam is a home cook and will address more of the questions that a basic home cook would find useful
Check out the book Cookwise. It's basically exactly what you're looking for. She also wrote a few other books that focus on particular areas like baking, I think called Bakewise.
When I was little, in the Philippines, I also saw people toss their rice in these large flat baskets to sort out impurities like rocks and hulls. I think the act of tossing it repeatedly also helped remove some of the hulls that were still stuck.
Literally saw the same thing in Tanzania; small world.
its kind of a dying practice in ph nowadays. you'll only really see the poor do it now since they buy sub-quality rice, my mom who comes from a poor background (even though her dad was rich) also does the same thing today even though shes much more well off now and buys quality rice from japan. but none of my friends do it, i'd say most millenials just wash it and dont toss their rice in a basket like their parents did.
Yep! Same in India in the 80s. Now we don't have to.
Yes, we used to do this too. Its called Winnowing. This video explains why it isn't done anymore. We don't do it anymore because the Aspirator machine does what manual winnowing does.
Since I moved to USA, I quit washing rice because I don’t want to lose the fortified stuff in it. We didn’t fortify our rice in the Philippines period. I never heard of the word (fortification) until I moved in US.
i have used free starch from rice mixed with water to fix textures in sauces if they got messed up, there can still be impurities in rice though, but if you're in the EU, the rice packets usually say whether or not to wash before cooking, i always wash my basmati rice 2 times.
“Why I wash my mouth, NOT my rice”
Cap: "I understand THAT reference!"
@@yusufanbarfirdausi621 why i season the cutboard not the steak?
@@thanthanh5190 yes
The same fucking joke, always
@@brenosilvamorais2510 and i love it
And remember: if your rice ever gets too moist, just throw an iPhone into the pot and wait an hour. It will soak it all up! Life hack!
Nice!
Omg it works thanks
An Android user? RE-
@@EmptyCheetosBag Nah, we just cook our rice perfectly. That is the real life hack.
@Winston Smith definitely the microwave. Good things happen when you put metal in the microwave. Particularly when they also have batteries that can explode
Great video as usual Adam, however one point you didn't cover is that unwashed rice tends to boil over in a rice cooker. I'm guessing because the unwashed free starches make bigger bubbles which stack onto each other, but I'm no food scientist. I just know if I don't wash my rice I'm going to end up having to clean up rice juice from the outside of my rice cooker and probably a little bit on my countertop.
This is the reason I wash rice too. Though I use the 'pasta' method, the result is the same, a horrible starchy mess that you need to clean up.
That is certainly a problem for all rice-cooker users. This might be a bit of a shock, but there are countries and peoples that don’t have rice-cookers and have never felt the need for one.
On the other hand, when I was taught to cook rice, a 100 years ago, I was told not to rinse it because 1) the rice is pre-cooked, and 2) it washes away the nutrients they add to fortify the rice. So now I’m at a conundrum: whether to eat enriched or less sticky rice. Lol
+
Agreed - this is the only reason I wash my rice.
I never washed my rice before putting it in a rice cooker. Never had this problem. It probably depends on the brand of rice.
When I was living in Korea, my grandma used to send me brown rice from her rural town which is full of taste but also has some unwelcome sand grains. I've washed it thoroughly, at least twice. Now I'm living in Japan and my main dish is Saitama white rice. It isn't likely to have dirt, but has significantly more starch residue than, say, Akita rice probably due to different varieties or hulling processes. Couldn't change my decade-old habit, I still wash rice twice, but I often use the starchy water from the second wash to thicken soup.