Do you wash your rice before you cook it?
Some say that the washing process is supposed to stop the rice sticking to the bottom of the rice cooker (which is due to the excessive amount of starch found in rice) – ie if you wash rice before cooking it, you can take out some of that starch and avoid it sticking.
Others say that rice used to be coated with talc!
And whilst those days are long gone, the custom of cleaning the rice still ‘sticks’ – excuse the pun!
- Rice Washing
We always use to wash our rice before placing it in the rice cooker and pressing the start button, but more recently in Japan you can buy rice that doesn’t need to be ‘pre-washed’.
Or even better still, you buy a machine to wash the rice for you!
If the yesteryear Japan’s rice harvest is anything to go by, I can see why the culture of washing the rice was important!
- Rice in Yesteryear Japan
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
I could definitely use this! Not that I couldn’t do this on my own, but it does get redundant.
In my home my mother still wash the rice (actually everything, such as packed pasta) because of that YesterYear picture. she believed the rice is dried on dirty ground with dirts sticking, animals walking across it, etc. In short, dirty.
After all, the rice consumed daily are local products without hygiene packing process.
And it’s better to be ready (wash the rice) than sorry (got stomacache).
RT @KimonoBox: Do you wash your rice? | Jpan http://bt.io/HPN Never heard of a Rice washer before. must be a novel japanese product. But if Michiba, of Iron Chef fame endorses it , it must be pretty good.
Good to hear – looks like the Iron Chef himself is keen on the rice washing and cooking pot too! So it must be good!
Great to hear this – wow washing packed pasta! interesting to get this feedback – thank you
In my case, most of the reasoning is just distrust and slight paranoia about hygiene.
Not washed = dirty. Factory doesn’t clean their product thoroughly
At least they don’t wash instant ramen too before cooking
Good point. I am the same. We always wash our rice.