Hersha Patel (native born UK desi) is on BBC Food channel. And she cooked rice enroute to making a fried rice dish with eggs. Uncle Roger (comedian Nigel Ng, a Malaysian Chinese) commented on the procedure. HOWEVER, however, however... there is a scientific reason why high excess of water and draining is healthier. It removes the toxic Arsenic (present in both white rice and especially brown rice) from the rice. That said, it is not necessary to do what aunty Hersha does -- cook the rice almost to completion. The rice needs to be boiled in water for just about 3 minutes or so, then drained through a colander, and then returned to the "regular" cooking method, whether it be in a rice-cooker, Instant pot, pressure cooker, microwave or stovetop. The traditional method of parboiling in the production of rice boils the rice with the husk on the grain. This ends up concentrating the arsenic in the rice. Parboiling after the husk is removed, washes off the arsenic. This is a huge difference in healthy eating. [source of image: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b06548] Here is a more recent confirmation of the same, with the right cooking method to make a healthy rice. https://phys.org/news/2020-11-cooki...qk0w4A4aF6rfkuq9IX2Wsic_oBDq27JREd1LpMRrkCSic When you wash your rice, do that after boiling it for ... a few (3 or 4) minutes. If you want to know what are Haiyah and Fuiyoh, check 7:36 min in the video posted earlier in a different thread: LINK
I have a related but unrelated question. Friends recommend that I use the water from washing rice for the curryleaf plant. Does this really help?
Thank you but what's with the short response? : ) Sounds like a wife or girl-friend's reply to "Is anything wrong?" when quite a lot is wrong and the guy is aware it is but unaware of what it is.
But it’s very much necessary to remove the starch in the rice. Cook the rice completely and drain the water. It’s been there since ages.. Even doctors recommend this especially for diabetic patients.
No idea if it does, but during the growing season I always save water from rinsing rice, washing and soaking beans, dal, vegetables etc and use it to water plants. I feel better doing this than simply pouring that water down the drain.
Oh... I meant you go with what is best to avoid the arsenic in the food chain. Why take it from rice and give it to curry leaf ? Aunty Hersha draining rice, and washing is good for diabetics. But uncle Roger has been going on about the perfect (Chinese) way of making fried rice, which requires washing rice first, and then cooking it without draining konjee later. That said, the comedian Nigel Ng in real life has said that he likes Biriyani a lot, and doesn't mind that the cooking of the rice is done in lots and lots of water, and drained, before it goes into the dum.
When I made the switch to brown gradually over many months - I completely ignored the bits of info I read about the arsenic in it. Thank you very much for bringing it to the fore! And I had no idea of this benefit of par-boiling. And that we can indeed par-boiling at home according to the link phys.org link you are sharing. This is such a good lesson to not gloss over tradition food processing techniques. Thank you very, very much.
I try to do this if I have the energy to do it. I recently read a post by a lady in our neighborhood (via a gardening group on Nextdoor) - who has changed the plumbing in her home so that all her kitchen waste water goes directly to her vegetable beds. She needs to use a special soap that is ok to use on edible plants. I don't know if there is a term to learn more about this.. She is running an experiment to see if she has enough water after kitchen use to sustain her garden without having to depend on any water outside of this. Unfortunately I couldn't find the post after my cursory reading to be able to find out how intensive of a change it is to one's kitchen plumbing.