[Sca-cooks] Partly OP: Brown vs. white rice?

[Terry Decker]

Brown rice is any rice which has not been milled to the point of removing
the aeluronic layer.  Polished rice is milled rice that has been treated
with linseed oil to provide a "polish" coat.

Most rice in the U.S., brown and white, is long-grain rice, which is to what
I suspect you are really objecting.  Short grain and medium grain rices seem
to be starchier, cook better and have better flavor.  Some of the health
food brown rices I have encountered have actually been partially hulled
brown rice with a lot of chaff remaining.  Nutritional--maybe, but certainly
textural and taste deficient.

The primary nutritional difference between white and brown rice is the
epicarp, mesocarp, endocarp, spermoderm, germ and aeluronic layer of brown
rice contain the B vitamins.  When those are milled away to make white rice,
the rice loses much of its nutritional value.  If the diet consists mainly
of white rice without something to provide supplemental B vitamins, then
there is a possibility of beriberi.  Apparently some commercial processors
have been adding B vitamins to the coatings in the polishing process to help
reduce the chances of beriberi.

As a small aside, period rices were more likely to be short or medium grain
rice.

Bear


>I don't know what kind of rice "brown rice" is, but i won't eat it,
>and i rarely ate it even when i was a strict vegetarian. It's nasty
>stuff in my experience.
>
>Unpolished rice is not necessarily like American brown rice. I've
>eaten rice that hadn't been polished to whiteness when i lived in
>Indonesia and it was tasty, not like American brown rice. The junk
>that is sold in America as brown rice is definitely an inferior rice.
>
>Then again, i won't buy white rice grown in the US, because American
>white rice is grossly inferior rice. One of the ways people bought
>rice in Indonesia was to smell it. Good rice is fragrant, and
>different rices smell different. I buy South or Southeast Asian rices
>because they actually smell and taste good. I don't even buy American
>rice for SCA feasts. I may compromise on some ingredients to save
>some money, but not the rice.
>
>Also, a nice high quality white rice soaks up sauces which brown rice
>won't, so brown rice doesn't fit well into many cuisines.
>
>Anahita
>Strong-Opinions-R-Us
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