[Sca-cooks] Brown Rice (was, converted rice)

[Pixel, Goddess and Queen]

> Also sprach Avraham haRofeh:
> >What Master A left out is that parboiling the rice before removing the bran
> >and germ also forces some of the nutrients from those outer layers into the
> >kernal. Converted rice is therefore (marginally) more nutritious than plain
> >polished white rice... but brown rice smokes 'em both nutritionally. The
> >cooking process and proportions are the same; converted rice needs 15-20%
> >longer cooking times.
>
> Yes, I knew about the nutritive aspect but didn't bother to mention
> it; the different cooking time was something I was aware of but
> couldn't easily describe. It's probably covered by "Follow package
> directions."

Parboiled rice doesn't degenerate into mush the way regular white rice
does, so you can't use it as a thickener, and it makes lousy pudding.

>
> Re brown rice. One of the things I find interesting is that I have
> never met an Asian by birth or descent who actually preferred brown
> rice, for all the advertising hype. Yes, it's a lot more nutritious
> than the polished varieties. But the ad copy would have you believe
> that people all over Asia, in their massively superior wisdom over we
> mere cave-dwellers in the West, are all stuffing themselves full of
> brown rice. For one thing, whole-grain rice is not defatted, and can
> become rancid in warm climates, which is probably why polishing,
> parboiling and pre-steaming rice before storage became something of a
> norm in the warmer parts of Asia, and rice tends not to be eaten in
> the really cold parts of Asia anyway.
>
> Adamantius, who prefers real oatmeal, polished rice, and malted,
> fermented barley

I also thought it had to do with the cachet of white rice. Like white
bread. You have to have money to afford white rice or white bread,
thus it is an indication of higher status than the unprocessed stuff.

Or so I'd heard.

Margaret, who was raised on oatmeal bread and thus considered WonderBread
a treat--go figure