My experiments with brown rice - Part 2

Epilogue, Part 1


Having bought the Sona-masoori version, I wanted to cook our regular South Indian meal. Rice with sambhar, rasam, kari (veggies !! not meat. I am a veggie), kootu, thayir pachadi. 

Brown Sona Masoori Rice

I am very used to quinoa.  So I guessed brown rice should be great with sambhar like quinoa and will make awesome sambhar saadham ( sambhar rice) . I was skeptical about rasam saadham ( rasam rice) and had good hopes on thayir saadham ( curd/yoghurt rice). Before seeing how it turned out, I want to narrate my experiences on cooking the rice, its texture and everything in that department.

Cooking brown rice is a bit different is what I would say. It needs more water and more cooking time as the husk is partially left on the grain, it has a tough coat. Thus the cooked rice is not as soft or spongy as white rice, but a bit tough(not uncooked) and rubbery. When you pressure cook, it is more soft, but still not as soft as white rice. It definitely has a different texture. This works great for basmathi rice as I use it only for making pulav and fried rice varieties. For south Indian dishes, I strictly use ponni raw/ sona masoori as I feel basmathi's flavour mightily clashes with sambhar, rasam or for the matter of fact any south indian stew/soup to give it a weird unoriginal taste. Okay, coming back to basmathi rice, white or brown, I cook it in a saucepan or electric cooker. The pulavs and fried rice just taste out of the world aided by the texture and the effect ghee and black pepper ( for fried rice) has over brown rice. 

I was a lot skeptical when thinking about south indian food though. The recipes call for the rice to be a lot more soft ( but not mushy). I put great faith in pressure cooking the rice, added more water had it in for 3-4 whistles and 10 mins on low heat before switching off when cooked along with toor dhal and other stuff in separate containers. Yes, it turned out a lot lot softer but still a bit rubbery. For sambar rice, it tasted great as expected, better than its white rice counterpart. When had as sambar rice, even the texture difference was not detectable. Rasam rice sucked :( . Curd rice had a very different unappealing look as I was used to the bright white color spongy buttery melting madness, it was brown-white, clearly textured, never melting but great tasting curd rice. Taste Wise we can never find fault but looks are sub-normal. Coming to the conclusion that looks don't matter as long as it tastes good, I started cooking brown rice on the days I made just sambar and on the days I made rasam, I had it with white rice. My husband, still said that brown rice with rasam is good too and I know that he has pretty high standards for taste. But I couldn't accept. The earthy taste clashed with rasam and kind of overpowered it for me. The rubbery texture of the rice was a rasam repellent!! That made things worse. 

What made sambhar cohesive but rasam to repel?? DHAL!! Yes! Dhal was the answer to solve a problem like Maria!!! That Was my EUREKA moment! The next day, I made some rasam. I mixed rice with dhal and ghee  as we do for the kids and then had rasam on top of it and I was in a state of trance until I finished a plateful and again I went for another serving.  And thus our family's marriage to brown rice happened and we are living happily ever after!