Last night as I was making some rice to have with dinner it occurred to me, as it frequently does, that these Swiss are crazy. They recommended cooking time for rice here seems to be 45-60 minutes for brown (which is what we were eating last night) and about half that for white rice*. Really? It's been a while since I cooked rice in what I like to annoy Reto by referring to as The Sensible Continent (=Australia, obviously. And then we have an argument about whether it actually is a continent or not, which Reto obviously always loses because he is wrong and foolish), but I'm sure brown rice cooks there in something like 25 minutes, and white rice in about half that time. And my (many many many) rice-cooking experiments in this country lead me to think that Australian estimates are far closer to the truth than Swiss ones.
Which reminds me of a conversation that I eavesdropped on some time ago, where my mother-in-law and brother-in-law were discussing corn on the cob, and whether we were, at the time, eating the fresh variety or the pre-cooked variety. There was some confusion for a while, and eventually my mother-in-law said "no, it's the fresh stuff; I boiled it for half an hour". I assumed she was joking and sort of laughed a bit, and then when I told them that I was under the impression that corn on the cob needs to be boiled for about 5 minutes it became clear that everyone thinks I have no idea about anything, can't cook and am probably feeding my family on nothing but hay and raw potatoes.
So what's going on? Why do we apparently need to cook everything forever in this wacky country? And why is the corn on the cob still so gristly and tough even after it's been tormented for all that time?
* I mean normal uncooked rice, not that horrible parboiled stuff which looks, tastes and smells weird and also doesn't really seem to even take much less time to cook anyway. I did read somewhere once that parboiled rice retains more of its nutritional value, but that doesn't convince me that it's worth eating.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
A Swiss person once told me that I shouldn't trust the instructions on the box of Barilla pasta. Instead, I should boil it for 3-5 minutes longer. Then it tastes much better.
Where I come from, we call that overcooked, soggy pasta! Ugh!
Is it any wonder that we virtually never go out to eat in this country? Who wants to pay that much money for bad food?
Here in Australia I cook my Jasmine (or sometimes medium grain) rice in the rice cooker. It takes around 30min for 2 cups... Not sure if a stove would be quicker??
I've never realy thought that Swiss food is overcooked (although actually, some veggies I can think of have been a bit on the extreme-boiled end of the scale), but cooking pasta that little bit longer to give it that extra melt-in-the-mouth quality? hmm.
As for rice cookers-I've never actually used one. Just cooking white rice on a stovetop should only take about 10 minutes though, shouldn't it? That being said, I often manage to make white rice turn gluggy and blah, and have at times seriously considered buying a rice cooker.
Highly recommend the rice cooker. Start the rice sometime int he afternoon. Set it and forget it. Keeps it warm until you are ready to eat it. Perfect every time.
Post a Comment