My experiments with brown rice - Part 1

Part 2,  Epilogue

Brown Basmathi rice

                   

I wanted to write this post for a long time now. But, whenever I wanted sit down to write, I never had enough time to complete it. When I once had the time and typed this encyclopedic lengthy write-up and was about to post it from my ipad to blogger, there was some bug in the app. I couldn't post it and lost the whole 2.5 hour long typed content too😡😡😡😡😡 I was mighty frustrated to retype and post it again. Now that I am on a 10 hour long flight and is bored beyond a point that even typing for this write-up sounds like I am sitting on top of  Jungfrau and enjoying the scenery, I have  started it again. So this is the prologue for a write-up that is going  be so long that I might put off some. 

So brown rice.... I never knew anything much about it until dec 2013, when my family visited us. One of them was recently diagnosed diabetic and so brown rice was a must. My sil went and bought it with my husband in the nearby Indian grocery shop. Kohinoor brown basmathi... This was the one that we were cooking along with white rice. When they left, I inherited around 2kgs of it , not knowing what to do with so much of  it and not wanting to waste, I decided to give it to my friend. Having tried puli saadham ( tamarind rice) with it, when they were visiting and finding it to be great and more flavorful than its white rice counterpart ( excluding the aroma of basmathi rice in puli saadham which I hate) , my experimental self  gave me a little nudge. So I dropped the idea of giving and started thinking about trying different dishes with it.  And so began my journey, into the unexpectedly cherishing world of brown rice. 

Having found that brown rice has its own unique flavor to it, I guessed it would stand on its own and decided to try JEERA PULAV with it first. Oh and to my glee, how it tasted?! Bliss!!! Then I went on to try PEAS PULAV, VEGETABLE PULAV with various combos of vegetables and every single one of it just far exceeded its white counterpart. I had always heard that brown rice just doesn't taste as good as white rice and somehow was placed as the kind of inferior variety in terms of taste and the consideration it got and was somewhat given the status as grain for diabetic and/or weight loss-healthy-not tasty-not optional for these kind of situations. But for me, it was totally baffling with the results that I was getting. I was sure shot certain that I would permanently be replacing white basmathi after my final experiment. There is one more test that it should pass! VEG FRIED RICE!! And it blew the roof and set its scale at the dizzying astronomical heights! 

All of these happened within a week and having next to nothing funda, I was very eager to know about brown rice. For the brief time I knew it, I always thought of brown rice as a separate variety of rice. Brown in colour, it has miraculous nutrient spectrum and health benefits. Digging superficially, I found out it is nothing but un-milled rice. With the husk only partially removed, it gets its color and the additional unique earthy flavour that I adore. So its nothing but white rice with its light-brown husk-coat! Doesn't this sound cool?! Un-milled,  it is nature putting its best food forward for our consumption. Rich in fibre, minerals and what-not with nature's fully packed goodness, it has far less glycemic load on the body when consumed. 

Armed with the new found information, My always hyper brain, made an assumption that there should be a brown rice counterpart for every variety of rice available. This assumption increased my drive to find out about what is available in the market. For that, the info from my friend who lives in mid-west proved invaluable when she shared with me that she got a bag of Sona-masoori rice from her grocery shop in Milwaukee. Being a South Indian my excitement broke boundaries. I just searched till I found a bag and was never this excited to cook, being a bored cook, that I am! 

I have decided to break this write-up to multiple posts looking at the length to which it is getting into. So let's continue my experimental journey on the next post.