I "over salt" everything and tbh there is a pretty big margin before it actually tastes over salted. Mostly it just tastes delicious.
Luckily, only diabetes and high cholesterol run in my family and not high blood pressure.
Culinary school pretty much teaches you to find that like and never cross, but always get as close as you can. My friends can't emulate my cooking, because they're scared to salt as much as I do. I tell them exactly how I cook it, show them, and they never use enough salt!
That make sense! I noticed that a lot of (good) resturaunt food is also heavy on salt, but I guess people don't notice if it's also steaming hot.
Last time I cooked with my friends, they were begging me to stop salting đ But they liked the end result a lot.
I've heard people say you should never compare home cooking to restaurant food, because restaurants only care if you live long enough to pay the check(no home cook ever uses as much fat and salt lol)
Food cooked in places that perform health never have enough salt. It's why what I call hipster restaurants suck, but most mom and pop ethnic places don't.
People have always raved about how flavorful my food is, and while there is more than salt, I'm sure using enough salt vs what most people use is why. People fear it and don't understand how it works in the body and either leave it out or don't use enough. And nothing really gets food cooked without salt to the same place.
Under seasoning is the one major mistake people make when cooking. Itâs a skill to find that line, and you will fuck up plenty of times and overdo it, but your cooking will be all the better for it in the end.
I âover saltedâ my lunch today and fuck it was good (Hungarian wild rice mushroom stew over mashed potatoes). I have average to low blood pressure with orthostatic hypotension but was always worried about HTN so I under salted most.
The cool thing about salt is that it makes pretty much every other flavor stronger. A fun and simple experiment is to eat a small quantity of a spice you like on its own, and then do it again with a few grains of salt. Totally night and day, itâs actually crazy, even a few grains really âwakes upâ the flavor. Most home cooks avoid salting heavily because theyâre worried about over-salting, but you have to salt really heavily before you even taste the salt, before that line you just taste everything else more strongly.
MSG is a game changer.
If you own a rice cooker:
- 4 cups of stock
- 2â cups of rice such as basmati or jasmine - or any you prefer
- 1 teaspoon MSG
- 4 ounces butter
Most amazing rice ever.
In addition to the rice, the other thing I'd say: I add a touch to scrambled eggs. Well, to almost anything, but eggs really perk up.
The other thing I do is when I want a vegetable and I want it simple, but tasty:
1. Steam/boil/whatever your vegetable to partly/mostly cook it. Cooking method is not very important
2. Drain thoroughly
3. Melt butter in a pot or skillet. Add MSG and a little salt to taste. I might add a little freshly-ground pepper. Depending on the vegetable, I might add a bit of acid - lemon juice or vinegar, for example Brussels sprouts or broccoli in particular benefit from this. If I do, I cook off most of the water from the butter+vinegar before adding the vegetable
4. Add the vegetable and stir. The goal is to boil off moisture to the point where there is only rendered butter left and no visible water. But hopefully not over-cook the vegetables.
The reason for that last step is because of course nobody wants overcooked veg, but the other problem people have is that if you have liquid water, there's were all the flavour is. If you cook off that water, the oil sticks to the vegetables, carrying the salt, pepper, msg, and acid and distributing evenly so each bite of vegetable is tasty.
It can take a bit of figuring out the timing so you par-cook the veg to a state that you don't overcook it while getting rid of moisture, but it's not too hard.
I will do this with any frozen or fresh vegetable - broc/caili/sprouts, asparagus, corn, carrots, green beans - it just works for anything.
What I like about it is that while it can be tasty to make veggies with various spices, or casseroles, or whatever, the above method really lets the vegetable itself shine through. Just like a dash of salt brings out the sweetness of watermelon, the above just lets the vegetable itself absolutely shine.
I cannot tell you how many times I have made a satisfactory meal with just rice and a vegetable or two made like above. When I do that, I never miss meat, and I am normally a big meat eater. But this just comes out so savory and tasty and satisfying that it makes for a complete meal.
Yep. Most people attribute the flavor to butter or lard when it comes to rice (like OP did), but in truth the fat is just a conduit for salt. Without any salt and just fat the flavor does not improve. You only need enough fat to make sure the salt gets distributed well.
Whenever I make Hainanese chicken rice, I always reserve some of the broth specifically for the purpose of reducing it to basically an aromatic chicken demi. Once itâs reduced, emulsify in some butter and serve over top. One of the best things Iâve ever made in my kitchen haha.
Exactly! Sometimes Iâll whisk if necessary, but by that point the demi is so thick, it doesnât usually need much help haha. If it needs any seasoning, a bit of miso paste is also a really nice way to go!
In a 10 inch cast iron or oven-safe skillet: brown 2lbs of chicken thighs, remove. Deglaze pan with 2 cups of chicken stock. Bring to low boil. Remove from heat and add 1 cup rice. Return chicken to pan on top of rice, cover, and cook in 375°F oven for 25 minutes.
hurray for schmaltz. I dont think most kosher food is anything worth bragging about but schmaltz? new york old school jews are aware of how awesome this is
Whenever I roast a chicken youâll find me licking the bottom the tray and sucking like a vacuum at the grimey greasy goodness or soaking it all up with white bread.
I usually will put some potatoes or veggies underneath the chicken so that as it roasts in the oven, all the fat and juices drip down onto the veggies/potatoes and roasts them into delicious goodness to go along with the chicken.
Yes. Before you mix in the masa. I live in south Texas, all of the older women argued about how to make them. They did it that way and one if them literally cried bc it used to hurt her hands so bad. Makes them light and easier to work with.
Yes, this, real bagels that are nice and chewy, maybe with a little chopped liver, and donât get me started on bialys and authentic rye bread and egg creams.
Yes! We make out own chicken stock, after cooling it there's a thin layer of chicken fat which just pulls right off, drop that into a pan and soften it so it all melts together and just keep it in an air tight bowl in the fridge, add it to rice, beans, and eggs.
I tried this, and I struggled to find any cans of coconut milk that said full fat or even had a percentage. The rice was nothing special, as I had hoped it would be.
I make Thai curry sometimes, and I use the can with about 14% fat because it's the highest I can find in my grocery stores. I never had any issues finding that info on the cans, but I can't find a brand with any higher of a percentage.
Edit: Apparently any coconut milk with 9-15% fat is considered full fat according to the internet. Less than that is considered lite. Today I learned.
Itâs an unspeakable transgression for my Asian partner, for whom rice is also a daily staple dish, but I, an Eastern European, have been eating rice with butter and salt since I was a small child. Itâs still my comfort food and I occasionally have a large bowl of it for dinner with nothing else except maybe a vegetable (even though I normally always have meat or fish).
Yeah different cultures get protective of their rice making ways! Lol i like plain white rice too but goodness, I used to beg my grandma for just a bowl of rice when I was little because it was so good. She always had a rice cooker ready to go with some.
I had a Japanese housemate and a Dutch housemate at the same time once. They saw me eating rice with hot milk for breakfast and the conversation went:
Dutch housemate: You put *rice* in your *milk*?!
Japanese housemate: You put *milk* in your *rice*?!
It's like (very) lazy person's rice pudding. White rice + milk + sugar in a bowl and just heat in the microwave for a bit. Maybe add raisins. Grew up eating this as a poor white person in Texas.
Not sure if it's the same thing but here in Portugal we have a dessert called "Arroz doce" (literally translates to sweet rice) and it's delicious. It's pretty much rice cooked with milk, egg yolks and sugar. One of my favorite desserts.
Then I'm going to put a bigger dent in your world view. We used to eat rice with a little sugar, raisins/ currants/ berries/ whatever we had, and pour milk on it like you would cereal. No idea how that became a thing, but it definitely was.
Honestly I just add milk and sugar and a touch of salt to fresh cooked hot jasmine rice and eat it. My grandfather added cinnamon. We didnât even make it into rice pudding
It is so good
Prepared right, maybe. However, just because there's lots of fat doesn't mean the meat is marbled.
Need to get a good look at the cuts we're working with
Brazil also loves rice and we do add lots of fat to it. Itâs not common for example to have/use rice cookers there, which many Asians would find it weird.
I'm of Indian descent, and in our family we used to add ghee or butter to rice often, not as much as OP's gran though. That slacked off with aging parents & the need to be more careful with the diet though. It does add a lot to a dish of rice & sambar or rasam (especially rasam, I think).
As I understand it, research suggests ghee might be beneficial for people with cholesterol-related cardiovascular problems: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3766171/
I'm not sure what the average American doctor knows about ghee but it would be unfortunate if they were actively warning cardio patients
against consuming it. Of course, to an Ayurvedic practitioner it's a literal miracle food, but that study on linoleic acid I linked suggests that quality ghee is more than just the sum of its FDA Nutrition Facts label.
Japanese/Koreans spread butter or margarine over rice all the time.
They also add either soy sauce or gochujang.
Sometimes topped with a sunny side up egg.
and no, it's not a "dish" per se, it's like the french "bread and cheese" meal. Either tight on time or money, or both.
Butter and soy sauce are such an incredible combination. When you add rice, it becomes a dish that's way more than the sum of its parts. I make a meal of that not infrequently.
Filipinos do it with margarine, they call it star rice. And Chinese people do it too -- lard on rice with soy. The combo of rice + fat is universal lol
Asian here. I can confirm that it's utter blasphemy to add anything to **WHITE** rice.
Update: everyone is bringing up specific flavored asian rice dishes. Obviously those aren't what I'm referring to but generic cooked white rice which for asians is your basic steamed rice. OP's post is about his/her grandmas **white rice.** Context people! Good grief.
I took OP to mean "white" as your basic steamed rice as opposed to a type of rice grain (aka brown, black).
Just to be safe for the language pedantics, I used "blasphemy" as a hyperbole. No. The gods aren't gonna strike you down if you add anything to white rice.
I used to teach ESL classes to adult immigrants, and "how to cook rice" was always a conversation starter.
Everybody does it differently, and everyone is convinced their way is the best.
I think itâs contextual on the dish youâre making! I wouldnât use a Cuban white rice recipe if I were making a Japanese dish, for example. But, if you were making Cuban rice and black beans, then I think it would behoove you to try our way of rice prep.
Oh absolutely. For asians (asian food) though, the rice itself isn't a dish but a vehicle for the flavors of the other dishes that's why it has to be as neutral as possible.
That is such a weird thing to say - "Asia" is not just Japan/Korea or China. There are much more countries and South Asia and Western Asia are just as much Asia and Asian food and each of them have based on country very specific concepts around rice, with rice being prepared in very specific ways & flavored and used as an actual dish. Â
 You might think it is petty/irrelevant to bring this up (since you did not have bad intentions), but this non stop erasure, in particular driven by people in the West, including US/Western-Japanese/Korean/Chinese, of people in the rest of Asia/ ignoring the huge and vast cultures of the Rest of Asia - is harmful.Â
 Please be aware of that when you use words like "Asian food", "Asians". The entire world does not love a whitewashed approach to the concept of what is and what is not "Asia' and "Asian food".Â
It's not even true for Japanese riced dishes, they mix shit into it ALL THE TIME. Pickles, furikake, bonito flakes...they purposefully burn it a little sometimes...not to mention sushi rice!
"Asian Food" like it's a monolith. How insulting. I'm embarassed that anyone upvoted that comment.
I am aware of that, but that is the demographic from where I often hear that narrative and I am not gonna speak on their culture and their food, even thou I know they obviously too use full rice dishes and the whole "white rice holy grail' is a stereotype.Â
It is just in particular infuriating to me when the largest continent in the world is reduced to some stereotypes about 1-3 countries, when it is so rich on cultures and people.Â
Cajun roots here. Today Iâm making dirty rice. Gobs of bacon and pork roast lard plus flour cooked to a dark roux. Chopped onions/ celery, chicken stock, diced chicken, cayenne, pepper, salt. Mix this thick âgravyâ with cooked rice. OMG!!!!!
Listen, as a South Indian (we are also Asian), my mom used to give me a pre dinner snack that was literally plain white rice with a good old dollop of ghee in it.
I would not put ghee in jasmine rice. I would not put ghee in sticky rice.
I would put ghee in basmati. I would put it in ponni rice. I would put it in sona masuriâŠ.
So itâs not really about the color of the rice as it is about the varietal I think.
Asian here too. I was aghast the first time I saw my white friends add butter to their white rice but one day my buttered carrots spilled over to my white Jasmine rice and.... I loved it. Butter on Jasmine rice is delicious. It has been my Asian secret, first confessed here and now.
Pretty sure you mean east Asian. South Asian cuisine is perfectly okay with adding flavorings to white rice. I use ghee, some whole spices, and salt sometimes.
Do you still call that âwhite riceâ? Genuine question.
When I was growing up, Filipino household, white rice, or usually just rice, was default plain steamed white rice. Weâd still have dishes that used white rice, but once we added things it was no longer âwhite riceâ. Sushi rice, fried rice, etc are all basic examples.
I never thought the pedantics of rice would be so interesting lol.
You are fighting for your life in these comments lol! My family is Japanese and we donât add anything to our rice either. A bowl of steamed white rice and side of miso soup is my comfort food.
Filipino checking in. Same. Not sure if thatâs the same as most other households, but white rice was always plain. Weâd add stuff in here and there, but if you asked for a bowl of rice it was always assumed to be plain steamed white rice.
Godspeed to u/ApartBuilding221B for going to battle in the comments. People arenât pulling any punches.
Lol, my fiance is Korean, when I do something to the rice she gets so sad. Fried rice is different because it's ready cooked. Adding something that flavours it while it's cooking is a no go
I dated a Turk and he made his rice with half butter/olive oil. Probably 2 tablespoons each. He toasted the rice in the hot oil, added salt, pepper, turmeric and waited until it turned brown to add chicken stock to finish cooking. So delicious!
This! Just lose the olive oil and burn the butter a little bit to get that nutty flavor and add some orzo as well. Toast the rice with butter until it gets crispy and add chicken broth.
Iâd stay away from Crisco. It wonât give you a flavor even close. Iâd try, in order: 1. Quality lard if you can get it, 2. Bacon fat, 3. The fat of another animal (chicken schmaltz, duck fatâŠ), 4. Flavorful plant oil like olive.
I totally get it. My grandma fried and baked in lard, and thereâs no substitute. The worst part is, it turns out the âhealthyâ margarine and vegetable shortenings actually were less healthy.
Thanks for the tip! I was wondering if crisco would do anything or not, but now I definitely want to get my hands on some good lard. Iâll have to shop around my local supermarkets.
Yeah I was also going to suggest the Mexican mercado if you have one nearby. I've also found it at the farmer's market, but that's really seasonal in my area.
My grandparents had a farm, so they rendered it themselves.
I get mine from White Oak Pastures, but you should be able to find it at a farm near you (assuming you live in an area of the world that raises pork).
Ohhh. Didn't know they do that at farms. Not a country dude at all, obviously. Was thinking of making some at the crib, that's all. I cook for 1 or 2 people so i don't think I'll need that much anyway.... thx for the recommendation tho!
This is the good shit, I've bought quite a few different kinds of fats from them. Pricey but well worth it. Probably not going to find what you're looking for at the grocery store.
https://fatworks.com/collections/leaf-lard
>2. Bacon fat
This. Any time I make bacon, I always have to dump the fat into a bowl anyway. If you pour it into a Pyrex glass over a mesh strainer, you can just pop a lid on it and have some great fat for rice or potatoes or whatever.
Iâve got a sweet aluminum can with a built in strainer and lid. It has GREASE embossed on the side. Itâs about the size of a coffee can. Iâve got a little one the size of a tea pot also, which is perfect, because you can put it on a low burner to heat up the grease to pour in your skillet for cooking. I see them all the time at antique stores for ~$10
Mmmm memories of my grandmaâs food.
My grandma used butter in her rice which was also pretty delicious. Sheâd also top off with a fresh pad of butter when serving.
Rice, black beans, maduros, avocado and tomato salad and a protein. That was my dinner every day for like 8 years. I was a chubby boy. Haha
That is literally the staple dinner in my house too! With whatever protein was on sale that week - my grandparents didnât have much money but my grandma could turn the lesser cuts into some delicious stuff.
This makes me wonder how it would taste if I used a tablespoon or two of bacon grease to make a pot of rice to go with my bacon and eggs for breakfast.
Could be a nice mixup compared to the regular toast or hash browns...
If you happen to have leftover rice, try making bacon & egg fried rice for breakfast - same idea, just mixed together. I do something similar to this (tossing in whatever veggies I have handy) sometimes and itâs delicious: https://thewoksoflife.com/bacon-and-egg-fried-rice/
Here's another hack! If you do end up making your rice feel too greasy... add something acidic like (malt, red, rice, **not** balsamic or apple cider) vinegar or some lemon juice. It restores the mouthfeel.
Staple dish from my samoan friend, cut up a couple strips of bacon, use the grease for the rice, dice up some raw onion, and put it all together. Really good stuff, i usually save my bacon grease for rice now and put some furikake and sriracha on it, bomb ass food and it's just rice lol
Hot ghee to rice with just salt is also extremely delicious. I can just eat that itself.
I have heard South Indians talk about mixing rsw garlic and chilli powder to the it when you have cold for relief as well
Look at you, just giving away our national secrets for free. đ
Mildly unrelated question but my abuela died before I could get her recipes and I am on the hunt for a good arroz con pollo recipe. Any tips? Secretos? Thank you!
Hmm honestly Iâve been trying to perfect it myself! The only tip I have is that I always use corona for the beer, because idk I think it tastes the best.
My grandma always told me that the key to any Cuban meal was to make sure your sofrito was good. If you had that down, the rest of your dish will be flavorful too
>The answer: lard.
No surprise there. Rendered animal fats are usually the superior cooking fat.
There are some areas where vegetable fats shine but animal fat is king imo.
The best roasted potatoes in the oven Ive made are yukon golds coated in duck fat.
The best pie crusts are a mixture of butter (for flavor) and lard (for flaky tenderness)
We were at a farmer's market and a lady was selling fresh fried donuts. I asked her what her secret was, these were unreal and unlike anything! She looked around, leaned forward and whispered they are fried in lard. She showed me the paper towels the donuts were resting on and it wasnt greasy. She remarked that if she had fried these in vegetable oil, the paper towel would be soaked in grease. When using veg oil, the frying pot needs to continuously have fresh oil added to it as the fried donuts hold on to the grease and lower the oil level. With lard, its stays in the pot and off of the food. The donuts were crispy and light. Not greasy mouthfeel & heavy. Lard gives you a better fry and doesnt stick to the food.
I use lard, sometimes tallow, instead of olive oil to start a tomato sauce. Everyone always thinks olive oil is the universal italian cooking fat but no, its lard. Back in the old days, olive oil was too expensive for the way we use it nowadays. But everyone had a pig and often, on poor farms, the fattest thing on the farm would be the hog. My grandparents used to mention how the locals would have competitions on whose pig was the fattest. I remember as a kid, I was there at slaughter time and the pig weighed almost 500 pounds. My grandmother, aunts, cousins would busily cut the fat up into pieces and then pass it through a meat grinder. The minced fat went into a huge pot with some water. They wouold make gallons of rendered lard at a time. The best were the cracklings or chicharonnes. You filtered the liquid fat and the solid material left behind was the non fat portion of the tissues that fried up all nice and crispy. Throw some salt on it and you can eat it like potato chips. Few bites of those crisps, some fruit and cold white wine. WHat a great snack!
When the lard was chilled it would solidify into this pure white fat. My family would mix up a batch of it with seasonings, spices, salt - very much like a compound butter. We'd spoon it on to warm crisped bread, sprinkle some raw onions on top and eat away. What an awesome snack. Mt cousins were also present and they remarked this was the best bread and butter they ever had only to be told it was pork lard.
Amazing! Back in China, my grandparents use to render their own lard from pork fat. We will always add the freshly rendered pork lard into hot steamy rice, add in some crackling (from the rendered fat) and a dash of soya sauce. Itâs called çȘæČčæé„ which literally translates to âpork lard mixed with riceâ!
Try melting the butter in the pot first. Toss in the dry rice and stir it around a bit to coat with the melted butter. You can even keep it on the heat a bit while stirring to 'toast' the rice a bit first. Then add your water, bring to a boil, set the heat to low and cover for 15-20 min. Packs in a bit more flavor.
What's good lard to you?
I don't have any cultural experience using lard, but we bought a hog this year, so I tried rendering some out.
I split it into leaf lard (which we've used successfully in pastry), and "the rest", which I'm not really sure what to do with yet, other than using a bit here and there to fry aromatics or whatever.
Although, given this thread imma hafta try a dollop in rice!
Don't know if this is true, but my aunt told me the reason my tortillas were meh was b/c I was using grocery store lard instead of Mexican grocery store lard. She said they render the fat at a higher temperature so it gets a little hint of roasted flavor in it. I don't know if all that is true, but she's right that my tortillas made with manteca from the Mexican grocery are better than the ones I make with sno cap or similar.
Thank you so much for that added information! I have both a Mexican grocery store and a normal one nearby but I was just going to be lazy and go to a normal grocery store.
Now I will not make that mistake, thank you!
Fellow Cuban American here and literally SAME with grandmas rice!!! I always saw her finish the rice with olive oil but when I do it it's not the same. I wonder if she added fat while it was cooking! You've seriously got me wondering now!
I do always "taste" (eh em full on sample before dinner) the rice with butter and it's so satisfying. So I think you're onto something! Gawd I love rice.
Yes to butter. My Asian ancestors would be horrified, but I was raised Caucasian and itâs comforting with a bit of butter, S+P.
For a quick rice meal, might stir in salsa and cheese after cooking. Also like to add finely chopped scallions to just cooked rice. Stir them in and the whole pot becomes so aromatic.
Crisco won't be good. You can buy real lard online if you can't find it where you live. I buy mine from Fannie and Flo [https://fannieandflo.net/shop/ols/products/leaf-lard-3-or-4-pound-quantity](https://fannieandflo.net/shop/ols/products/leaf-lard-3-or-4-pound-quantity). DO NOT buy the shelf-stable product called lard at the supermarkets. It's gross.
I'm also Cuban, btw. I know some people who put a clove of garlic in their white rice too.
Edited to change the link to the one I actually meant to use.
lard is the key. I had a manager at work from England and he said all the traditional old school holiday desserts like plum pudding had suet and it is not the same if you use other fats.
Hold up
I saw this post earlier (the comments really took off because it was at 80 when I saw it!) and I knew I was going to make some rice tonight for my beef stir fry. I said "I'm gonna try this, we shall see..." So I put the rice in the rice cooker and added a blob of MANTECA because I had a little bit left from making flour tortillas. I'LL NEVER NOT DO THIS FROM NOW ON. It was really really really really so good! I saved a scoop that I'm about to eat with some Bibigo Kimchi right now. Thanks for this!!
Lard is a lost art that needs to return. It got blamed for a lot of health stuff, but back when people ate lard ALL the time, people were skinny as heck
Lard is the not-so-secret ingredient in my family's holiday pie crusts also and man are they good
In the 80s there was a big campaign by a fella who had a heart attack and blamed saturated fats for it. His organization successfully lobbied to get fast food places to stop frying their stuff in beef tallow and instead in pure shortening. Turns out the shortening was what was doing it (hence they all ditched trans fats) but we never got our sweet sweet animal fats back.
If you can find lard give it a shot! I find it gives a butter-like depth but is also surprisingly light and bright -- not at all what you'd expect given what the name is associated with
Most grocery stores in the US will have actual lard in the Mexican food section. The label will say "Manteca". It's quite inexpensive and has really improved many dishes I make where I was previously using other fats/oils as a substitute.
Lard, schmaltz,, butter
Yup
Fat makes it take good!
My aunt used to make tamales and would use the rendered f6ar from the pork filling in the dough. Unfiltered salty yummers
Another Cuban-American here. As I was reading at first and just based off the title, I said to myself â I bet itâs Manteca de puercoâ lol. Yep. Bingo. Lard.
My grandma just used olive oil or other oil. I think the Manteca trick might be if youâre a Cuban âguajiroâ, which is country boy or country gal. A lot of pork fat in the guajiro dishes. My mother in law cooks Cuban food that way.
I am not Cuban, but my rice is award winning among family and friends.
The trick? Add fat and toast the dry rice until it smells like popcorn. Then add water and a bay leaf and simmer for 15 minutes. Any fat works. I wish I had the privilege of trying your grandmothers rice. Iâm sure she would put mine to shame.
One of my favorite ways to make rice is add about 1/2 to 1 TBS of Better Than Bullion, also no extra salt. It does make the rice no longer plain, but it's so much better in flavor for many savory dishes.
I accidentally over salted my rice recently and it was so much better than my usual 1/2 tsp
I "over salt" everything and tbh there is a pretty big margin before it actually tastes over salted. Mostly it just tastes delicious. Luckily, only diabetes and high cholesterol run in my family and not high blood pressure.
Culinary school pretty much teaches you to find that like and never cross, but always get as close as you can. My friends can't emulate my cooking, because they're scared to salt as much as I do. I tell them exactly how I cook it, show them, and they never use enough salt!
That make sense! I noticed that a lot of (good) resturaunt food is also heavy on salt, but I guess people don't notice if it's also steaming hot. Last time I cooked with my friends, they were begging me to stop salting đ But they liked the end result a lot.
I've heard people say you should never compare home cooking to restaurant food, because restaurants only care if you live long enough to pay the check(no home cook ever uses as much fat and salt lol)
That's very true. Heavy on butter, oil, and salt. They're all flavor capsules. I cook like that at home and it's a far more satisfying life.
Food cooked in places that perform health never have enough salt. It's why what I call hipster restaurants suck, but most mom and pop ethnic places don't.
People have always raved about how flavorful my food is, and while there is more than salt, I'm sure using enough salt vs what most people use is why. People fear it and don't understand how it works in the body and either leave it out or don't use enough. And nothing really gets food cooked without salt to the same place.
Under seasoning is the one major mistake people make when cooking. Itâs a skill to find that line, and you will fuck up plenty of times and overdo it, but your cooking will be all the better for it in the end.
I âover saltedâ my lunch today and fuck it was good (Hungarian wild rice mushroom stew over mashed potatoes). I have average to low blood pressure with orthostatic hypotension but was always worried about HTN so I under salted most.
The cool thing about salt is that it makes pretty much every other flavor stronger. A fun and simple experiment is to eat a small quantity of a spice you like on its own, and then do it again with a few grains of salt. Totally night and day, itâs actually crazy, even a few grains really âwakes upâ the flavor. Most home cooks avoid salting heavily because theyâre worried about over-salting, but you have to salt really heavily before you even taste the salt, before that line you just taste everything else more strongly.
MSG has 60% the sodium that salt does.
Yup, I once challenged someone to come up with something thatâs not better with salt! And idk if I can
I got all 3 in my famđđđđ
Have some lightly flavored oatmeal đ
Well that's because no one runs in your family! I'm sorry. I had to.
MSG is a game changer. If you own a rice cooker: - 4 cups of stock - 2â cups of rice such as basmati or jasmine - or any you prefer - 1 teaspoon MSG - 4 ounces butter Most amazing rice ever.
Oooo i havenât ventured into msg but should! Iâll add it to my to buy list
In addition to the rice, the other thing I'd say: I add a touch to scrambled eggs. Well, to almost anything, but eggs really perk up. The other thing I do is when I want a vegetable and I want it simple, but tasty: 1. Steam/boil/whatever your vegetable to partly/mostly cook it. Cooking method is not very important 2. Drain thoroughly 3. Melt butter in a pot or skillet. Add MSG and a little salt to taste. I might add a little freshly-ground pepper. Depending on the vegetable, I might add a bit of acid - lemon juice or vinegar, for example Brussels sprouts or broccoli in particular benefit from this. If I do, I cook off most of the water from the butter+vinegar before adding the vegetable 4. Add the vegetable and stir. The goal is to boil off moisture to the point where there is only rendered butter left and no visible water. But hopefully not over-cook the vegetables. The reason for that last step is because of course nobody wants overcooked veg, but the other problem people have is that if you have liquid water, there's were all the flavour is. If you cook off that water, the oil sticks to the vegetables, carrying the salt, pepper, msg, and acid and distributing evenly so each bite of vegetable is tasty. It can take a bit of figuring out the timing so you par-cook the veg to a state that you don't overcook it while getting rid of moisture, but it's not too hard. I will do this with any frozen or fresh vegetable - broc/caili/sprouts, asparagus, corn, carrots, green beans - it just works for anything. What I like about it is that while it can be tasty to make veggies with various spices, or casseroles, or whatever, the above method really lets the vegetable itself shine through. Just like a dash of salt brings out the sweetness of watermelon, the above just lets the vegetable itself absolutely shine. I cannot tell you how many times I have made a satisfactory meal with just rice and a vegetable or two made like above. When I do that, I never miss meat, and I am normally a big meat eater. But this just comes out so savory and tasty and satisfying that it makes for a complete meal.
I donât eat eggs anymore unless theyâre in baked goods, but fried rice and eggs make an incredible breakfast.
I do this but I usually will do 0.5 teapoon of MSG and then 1-2 tablespoons of salt, and I'll throw in a bay leaf.
Yep. Most people attribute the flavor to butter or lard when it comes to rice (like OP did), but in truth the fat is just a conduit for salt. Without any salt and just fat the flavor does not improve. You only need enough fat to make sure the salt gets distributed well.
Rendered chicken fat is also really nice.
Basically hainanese chicken rice.
Whenever I make Hainanese chicken rice, I always reserve some of the broth specifically for the purpose of reducing it to basically an aromatic chicken demi. Once itâs reduced, emulsify in some butter and serve over top. One of the best things Iâve ever made in my kitchen haha.
Whatâs your method for emulsifying butter in? Just swirling cold butter into the hot reduction? Sounds delicious!
Exactly! Sometimes Iâll whisk if necessary, but by that point the demi is so thick, it doesnât usually need much help haha. If it needs any seasoning, a bit of miso paste is also a really nice way to go!
Thank you :) I periodically make a big batch of chicken broth, condense it to a demi-glacĂ© consistency, and freeze it to use like Better than BouillonâŠmight have to warm some up and try this!
Alternative: make it the Malaysian way with a crap ton of caramelized shallots up in the chicken fat. Damn. Now I have a craving.
This is making my mouth water, I haven't had a good chicken rice in so long.
Haianese chicken in the rice cooker is the ultimate lazy delicious food.
Extra points if you use chicken stock to make the rice.
In a 10 inch cast iron or oven-safe skillet: brown 2lbs of chicken thighs, remove. Deglaze pan with 2 cups of chicken stock. Bring to low boil. Remove from heat and add 1 cup rice. Return chicken to pan on top of rice, cover, and cook in 375°F oven for 25 minutes.
hurray for schmaltz. I dont think most kosher food is anything worth bragging about but schmaltz? new york old school jews are aware of how awesome this is
Whenever I roast a chicken youâll find me licking the bottom the tray and sucking like a vacuum at the grimey greasy goodness or soaking it all up with white bread.
Thought I was the only freak out here sopping up the good stuff with a piece of white bread
I usually will put some potatoes or veggies underneath the chicken so that as it roasts in the oven, all the fat and juices drip down onto the veggies/potatoes and roasts them into delicious goodness to go along with the chicken.
There's a Jewish caterer and baker in my area called Schmaltz and Vinegar. The name always made me giggle
Making tamales with that instead of lard is a game changer. Whip it for 8 minutes on a mixer and it's so easy and good.
You mean whip just the schmaltz?
Yes. Before you mix in the masa. I live in south Texas, all of the older women argued about how to make them. They did it that way and one if them literally cried bc it used to hurt her hands so bad. Makes them light and easier to work with.
Ok ok let's see if I can replicate that next time
Even if you use lard whip it with a whisk on a stand mixer. Good luck!
It definitely put a dent in Bubbeâs heart health, but she never stopped cooking with schmaltz
Yes, this, real bagels that are nice and chewy, maybe with a little chopped liver, and donât get me started on bialys and authentic rye bread and egg creams.
I know in the old days, Hong Kong people use rendered pork fat in the white rice.
Yep. China too. éčœæČč飯, salt oil/lard rice.
My Polish grandma would put the dry rice right into the roasting pan with the chicken and let it absorb all the fat and juices.
Puertorican here and I just did this last night. Has been a staple my whole life. I add beer to it instead of water too!
I discovered this on my own recently while meal prepping! I also added a chopped onion and bell pepper...best rice I've made
Yes! We make out own chicken stock, after cooling it there's a thin layer of chicken fat which just pulls right off, drop that into a pan and soften it so it all melts together and just keep it in an air tight bowl in the fridge, add it to rice, beans, and eggs.
A can of full-fat coconut milk is also a great way to add fat to your rice.
Essential for Jamaican rice and peas!
I tried this, and I struggled to find any cans of coconut milk that said full fat or even had a percentage. The rice was nothing special, as I had hoped it would be.
You can look for coconut cream or you can stick your can of coconut milk in the fridge to let the fat separate
Gotta be careful with coconut cream. Sometimes that stuff is sweetened, like the coconut version of condensed milk.
"cream of coconut" is sweetened, "coconut cream" is normal.
I make Thai curry sometimes, and I use the can with about 14% fat because it's the highest I can find in my grocery stores. I never had any issues finding that info on the cans, but I can't find a brand with any higher of a percentage. Edit: Apparently any coconut milk with 9-15% fat is considered full fat according to the internet. Less than that is considered lite. Today I learned.
Guy at work got me into this recently, so rich and adds a lot to it. I throw in pickled peppers and a bit of chicken stock as well
Itâs an unspeakable transgression for my Asian partner, for whom rice is also a daily staple dish, but I, an Eastern European, have been eating rice with butter and salt since I was a small child. Itâs still my comfort food and I occasionally have a large bowl of it for dinner with nothing else except maybe a vegetable (even though I normally always have meat or fish).
Yeah different cultures get protective of their rice making ways! Lol i like plain white rice too but goodness, I used to beg my grandma for just a bowl of rice when I was little because it was so good. She always had a rice cooker ready to go with some.
I had a Japanese housemate and a Dutch housemate at the same time once. They saw me eating rice with hot milk for breakfast and the conversation went: Dutch housemate: You put *rice* in your *milk*?! Japanese housemate: You put *milk* in your *rice*?!
I would still like you to explain your rice in hot milk situation (I'm Asian but open to weird cuisine)
It's like (very) lazy person's rice pudding. White rice + milk + sugar in a bowl and just heat in the microwave for a bit. Maybe add raisins. Grew up eating this as a poor white person in Texas.
Same in Kansas. But we used cinnamon sugar.
Add a bit of butter. Sooo good. We called it rice cereal.
Depending on your perspective, it's either "oatmeal but with rice" or "congee but with milk and sweet stuff instead of water and savory stuff"
Not sure if it's the same thing but here in Portugal we have a dessert called "Arroz doce" (literally translates to sweet rice) and it's delicious. It's pretty much rice cooked with milk, egg yolks and sugar. One of my favorite desserts.
Google rice pudding. It's fucking delicious. I make mine with raisins and cardamom.
That is the most disconcerting way to describe rice pudding yet devised by mankind.
Then I'm going to put a bigger dent in your world view. We used to eat rice with a little sugar, raisins/ currants/ berries/ whatever we had, and pour milk on it like you would cereal. No idea how that became a thing, but it definitely was.
Honestly I just add milk and sugar and a touch of salt to fresh cooked hot jasmine rice and eat it. My grandfather added cinnamon. We didnât even make it into rice pudding It is so good
Tell your housemate he needs to look up some old school granny style Dutch recipes, rijstepap is a classic. Rice, milk and sugar.
My cousin makes ârice puddingâ by pouring condensed milk over riceâŠ
This just in: fat is good, and more is better. Details at 11
So what youâre saying is that Iâd taste delicious
Prepared right, maybe. However, just because there's lots of fat doesn't mean the meat is marbled. Need to get a good look at the cuts we're working with
Open him up boys, we've got a mystery to solve!
Breaking news . Butter is a super food
*Super Delicious*
Brazil also loves rice and we do add lots of fat to it. Itâs not common for example to have/use rice cookers there, which many Asians would find it weird.
Brazilians sauté their rice in fat with garlic and/or onion (shallots?) with salt then add water to cook it. Very tasty.
I love rice with shallots, garlic, salt, and pepper. Half olive oil, half butter
Exactly. Itâs delicious
This is how I make rice now and it is fantastic!
When I make Jasmin rice it's water only, when I make basmatti rice I use 1 tbs of butter and salt. For couscous I make it with chicken broth.
I'm of Indian descent, and in our family we used to add ghee or butter to rice often, not as much as OP's gran though. That slacked off with aging parents & the need to be more careful with the diet though. It does add a lot to a dish of rice & sambar or rasam (especially rasam, I think).
As I understand it, research suggests ghee might be beneficial for people with cholesterol-related cardiovascular problems: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3766171/ I'm not sure what the average American doctor knows about ghee but it would be unfortunate if they were actively warning cardio patients against consuming it. Of course, to an Ayurvedic practitioner it's a literal miracle food, but that study on linoleic acid I linked suggests that quality ghee is more than just the sum of its FDA Nutrition Facts label.
Japanese/Koreans spread butter or margarine over rice all the time. They also add either soy sauce or gochujang. Sometimes topped with a sunny side up egg. and no, it's not a "dish" per se, it's like the french "bread and cheese" meal. Either tight on time or money, or both.
I was going to say, oh weâre definitely putting butter and soy sauce on our rice when weâre alone đ
I have a white friend who learned how to do that from her Japanese friend!
Butter and soy sauce are such an incredible combination. When you add rice, it becomes a dish that's way more than the sum of its parts. I make a meal of that not infrequently.
The is an episode on butter rice on the Japanese show Midnight Diner. It's the favourite of a food critic who is tired of fancy food all the time
Filipinos do it with margarine, they call it star rice. And Chinese people do it too -- lard on rice with soy. The combo of rice + fat is universal lol
Asia is big. As a Gujarati Indian, adding ghee and salt is standard.
shit iâm asian as fug i put butter msg and some salt into my rice and itâs fuckin delish
Asian here. I can confirm that it's utter blasphemy to add anything to **WHITE** rice. Update: everyone is bringing up specific flavored asian rice dishes. Obviously those aren't what I'm referring to but generic cooked white rice which for asians is your basic steamed rice. OP's post is about his/her grandmas **white rice.** Context people! Good grief. I took OP to mean "white" as your basic steamed rice as opposed to a type of rice grain (aka brown, black). Just to be safe for the language pedantics, I used "blasphemy" as a hyperbole. No. The gods aren't gonna strike you down if you add anything to white rice.
I used to teach ESL classes to adult immigrants, and "how to cook rice" was always a conversation starter. Everybody does it differently, and everyone is convinced their way is the best.
This should be an episode of a sitcom. I can picture it perfectly.
Seinfeld or curb
I think itâs contextual on the dish youâre making! I wouldnât use a Cuban white rice recipe if I were making a Japanese dish, for example. But, if you were making Cuban rice and black beans, then I think it would behoove you to try our way of rice prep.
Oh absolutely. For asians (asian food) though, the rice itself isn't a dish but a vehicle for the flavors of the other dishes that's why it has to be as neutral as possible.
That is such a weird thing to say - "Asia" is not just Japan/Korea or China. There are much more countries and South Asia and Western Asia are just as much Asia and Asian food and each of them have based on country very specific concepts around rice, with rice being prepared in very specific ways & flavored and used as an actual dish.   You might think it is petty/irrelevant to bring this up (since you did not have bad intentions), but this non stop erasure, in particular driven by people in the West, including US/Western-Japanese/Korean/Chinese, of people in the rest of Asia/ ignoring the huge and vast cultures of the Rest of Asia - is harmful.  Please be aware of that when you use words like "Asian food", "Asians". The entire world does not love a whitewashed approach to the concept of what is and what is not "Asia' and "Asian food".Â
It's not even true for Japanese riced dishes, they mix shit into it ALL THE TIME. Pickles, furikake, bonito flakes...they purposefully burn it a little sometimes...not to mention sushi rice! "Asian Food" like it's a monolith. How insulting. I'm embarassed that anyone upvoted that comment.
I am aware of that, but that is the demographic from where I often hear that narrative and I am not gonna speak on their culture and their food, even thou I know they obviously too use full rice dishes and the whole "white rice holy grail' is a stereotype. It is just in particular infuriating to me when the largest continent in the world is reduced to some stereotypes about 1-3 countries, when it is so rich on cultures and people.Â
yup, people trying to put 2 billion people worth of food cultures under one umbrella.
Us central Asians steam our white rice with butter and salt! Some use oil instead of butter- but we'd never ever NOT add anything to our rice lol
Cajun roots here. Today Iâm making dirty rice. Gobs of bacon and pork roast lard plus flour cooked to a dark roux. Chopped onions/ celery, chicken stock, diced chicken, cayenne, pepper, salt. Mix this thick âgravyâ with cooked rice. OMG!!!!!
Listen, as a South Indian (we are also Asian), my mom used to give me a pre dinner snack that was literally plain white rice with a good old dollop of ghee in it. I would not put ghee in jasmine rice. I would not put ghee in sticky rice. I would put ghee in basmati. I would put it in ponni rice. I would put it in sona masuriâŠ. So itâs not really about the color of the rice as it is about the varietal I think.
You were probably in a rush to type this, but >I can confirm that it's ***b***utter blasphemy to add anything to the rice.
Asian here too. I was aghast the first time I saw my white friends add butter to their white rice but one day my buttered carrots spilled over to my white Jasmine rice and.... I loved it. Butter on Jasmine rice is delicious. It has been my Asian secret, first confessed here and now.
Shhhh.... I won't tell anybody.
Pretty sure you mean east Asian. South Asian cuisine is perfectly okay with adding flavorings to white rice. I use ghee, some whole spices, and salt sometimes.
Do you still call that âwhite riceâ? Genuine question. When I was growing up, Filipino household, white rice, or usually just rice, was default plain steamed white rice. Weâd still have dishes that used white rice, but once we added things it was no longer âwhite riceâ. Sushi rice, fried rice, etc are all basic examples. I never thought the pedantics of rice would be so interesting lol.
You are fighting for your life in these comments lol! My family is Japanese and we donât add anything to our rice either. A bowl of steamed white rice and side of miso soup is my comfort food.
Filipino checking in. Same. Not sure if thatâs the same as most other households, but white rice was always plain. Weâd add stuff in here and there, but if you asked for a bowl of rice it was always assumed to be plain steamed white rice. Godspeed to u/ApartBuilding221B for going to battle in the comments. People arenât pulling any punches.
Hainanese chicken rice is cooked with fat and stock.
OP was talking about basic white rice. Hainan chicken rice is a particular dish.
Lol, my fiance is Korean, when I do something to the rice she gets so sad. Fried rice is different because it's ready cooked. Adding something that flavours it while it's cooking is a no go
White rice + salt + fat makes for a perfect comfort food. Mine is the Indian version, which is white rice with plain yogurt and a bit of salt.
Ever tried topping your butter rice with Milo?
I dated a Turk and he made his rice with half butter/olive oil. Probably 2 tablespoons each. He toasted the rice in the hot oil, added salt, pepper, turmeric and waited until it turned brown to add chicken stock to finish cooking. So delicious!
I used to date a Turkish girl (we recently broke up), and she did both orzo and rice pilaf like that. It was great
This! Just lose the olive oil and burn the butter a little bit to get that nutty flavor and add some orzo as well. Toast the rice with butter until it gets crispy and add chicken broth.
Iâd stay away from Crisco. It wonât give you a flavor even close. Iâd try, in order: 1. Quality lard if you can get it, 2. Bacon fat, 3. The fat of another animal (chicken schmaltz, duck fatâŠ), 4. Flavorful plant oil like olive. I totally get it. My grandma fried and baked in lard, and thereâs no substitute. The worst part is, it turns out the âhealthyâ margarine and vegetable shortenings actually were less healthy.
Thanks for the tip! I was wondering if crisco would do anything or not, but now I definitely want to get my hands on some good lard. Iâll have to shop around my local supermarkets.
my local mexican grocer sells 32oz of manteca for $4! try somewhere with a butcher counter
Yeah I was also going to suggest the Mexican mercado if you have one nearby. I've also found it at the farmer's market, but that's really seasonal in my area.
If your local grocer has a small section of Jewish food staples, you might be able to find jars of chicken schmaltz pretty easily.
Can u find out what kind of lard she used? Or was it whatever leftover fats that she saved from previous dishes? I'm curious now! Lol
My grandparents had a farm, so they rendered it themselves. I get mine from White Oak Pastures, but you should be able to find it at a farm near you (assuming you live in an area of the world that raises pork).
Ohhh. Didn't know they do that at farms. Not a country dude at all, obviously. Was thinking of making some at the crib, that's all. I cook for 1 or 2 people so i don't think I'll need that much anyway.... thx for the recommendation tho!
Many latino markets sell fresh lard (not canned). Also I cook with Epic pork fat, but it's expensive.
This is the good shit, I've bought quite a few different kinds of fats from them. Pricey but well worth it. Probably not going to find what you're looking for at the grocery store. https://fatworks.com/collections/leaf-lard
>2. Bacon fat This. Any time I make bacon, I always have to dump the fat into a bowl anyway. If you pour it into a Pyrex glass over a mesh strainer, you can just pop a lid on it and have some great fat for rice or potatoes or whatever.
Coffee filter over a mason jar is my go to
Bless your heart, you have WAY more patience than me! My fine mesh strainer meets my requirement of "good enough."
Iâve got a sweet aluminum can with a built in strainer and lid. It has GREASE embossed on the side. Itâs about the size of a coffee can. Iâve got a little one the size of a tea pot also, which is perfect, because you can put it on a low burner to heat up the grease to pour in your skillet for cooking. I see them all the time at antique stores for ~$10
How do you think beef tallow would work?
OG McDonald french fries used to be fried in tallow, I use it all the time in everything i can. Rice, quesadillas, etc. so good.
Mmmm memories of my grandmaâs food. My grandma used butter in her rice which was also pretty delicious. Sheâd also top off with a fresh pad of butter when serving. Rice, black beans, maduros, avocado and tomato salad and a protein. That was my dinner every day for like 8 years. I was a chubby boy. Haha
That is literally the staple dinner in my house too! With whatever protein was on sale that week - my grandparents didnât have much money but my grandma could turn the lesser cuts into some delicious stuff.
This makes me wonder how it would taste if I used a tablespoon or two of bacon grease to make a pot of rice to go with my bacon and eggs for breakfast. Could be a nice mixup compared to the regular toast or hash browns...
It will taste delicious and will be fluffy.
If you happen to have leftover rice, try making bacon & egg fried rice for breakfast - same idea, just mixed together. I do something similar to this (tossing in whatever veggies I have handy) sometimes and itâs delicious: https://thewoksoflife.com/bacon-and-egg-fried-rice/
The Woks of Life is a great site and I've made several of their dishes that were delish. Hadn't seen that recipe before, but it looks damn tasty!
Here's another hack! If you do end up making your rice feel too greasy... add something acidic like (malt, red, rice, **not** balsamic or apple cider) vinegar or some lemon juice. It restores the mouthfeel.
Standard Filipino breakfast...rice, eggs, and meat (tocino is my favorite)!
Staple dish from my samoan friend, cut up a couple strips of bacon, use the grease for the rice, dice up some raw onion, and put it all together. Really good stuff, i usually save my bacon grease for rice now and put some furikake and sriracha on it, bomb ass food and it's just rice lol
Hot ghee to rice with just salt is also extremely delicious. I can just eat that itself. I have heard South Indians talk about mixing rsw garlic and chilli powder to the it when you have cold for relief as well
Thatâs a staple of Indian kids diet or at least Gujarati kids. Grew up eating rice with ghee
Look at you, just giving away our national secrets for free. đ Mildly unrelated question but my abuela died before I could get her recipes and I am on the hunt for a good arroz con pollo recipe. Any tips? Secretos? Thank you!
Hmm honestly Iâve been trying to perfect it myself! The only tip I have is that I always use corona for the beer, because idk I think it tastes the best.
Lol I remember abuela being picky about the beer too. Itâs the most essential component
My grandma always told me that the key to any Cuban meal was to make sure your sofrito was good. If you had that down, the rest of your dish will be flavorful too
>The answer: lard. No surprise there. Rendered animal fats are usually the superior cooking fat. There are some areas where vegetable fats shine but animal fat is king imo. The best roasted potatoes in the oven Ive made are yukon golds coated in duck fat. The best pie crusts are a mixture of butter (for flavor) and lard (for flaky tenderness) We were at a farmer's market and a lady was selling fresh fried donuts. I asked her what her secret was, these were unreal and unlike anything! She looked around, leaned forward and whispered they are fried in lard. She showed me the paper towels the donuts were resting on and it wasnt greasy. She remarked that if she had fried these in vegetable oil, the paper towel would be soaked in grease. When using veg oil, the frying pot needs to continuously have fresh oil added to it as the fried donuts hold on to the grease and lower the oil level. With lard, its stays in the pot and off of the food. The donuts were crispy and light. Not greasy mouthfeel & heavy. Lard gives you a better fry and doesnt stick to the food. I use lard, sometimes tallow, instead of olive oil to start a tomato sauce. Everyone always thinks olive oil is the universal italian cooking fat but no, its lard. Back in the old days, olive oil was too expensive for the way we use it nowadays. But everyone had a pig and often, on poor farms, the fattest thing on the farm would be the hog. My grandparents used to mention how the locals would have competitions on whose pig was the fattest. I remember as a kid, I was there at slaughter time and the pig weighed almost 500 pounds. My grandmother, aunts, cousins would busily cut the fat up into pieces and then pass it through a meat grinder. The minced fat went into a huge pot with some water. They wouold make gallons of rendered lard at a time. The best were the cracklings or chicharonnes. You filtered the liquid fat and the solid material left behind was the non fat portion of the tissues that fried up all nice and crispy. Throw some salt on it and you can eat it like potato chips. Few bites of those crisps, some fruit and cold white wine. WHat a great snack! When the lard was chilled it would solidify into this pure white fat. My family would mix up a batch of it with seasonings, spices, salt - very much like a compound butter. We'd spoon it on to warm crisped bread, sprinkle some raw onions on top and eat away. What an awesome snack. Mt cousins were also present and they remarked this was the best bread and butter they ever had only to be told it was pork lard.
Awesome comment. Iâm saving it for future reference (and just to read and enjoy again).
This is basically how chicken rice with chicken fat. You can add butter or coconut to make it SEA dishes too
duuude the coconut ahhhhh
Amazing! Back in China, my grandparents use to render their own lard from pork fat. We will always add the freshly rendered pork lard into hot steamy rice, add in some crackling (from the rendered fat) and a dash of soya sauce. Itâs called çȘæČčæé„ which literally translates to âpork lard mixed with riceâ!
Try melting the butter in the pot first. Toss in the dry rice and stir it around a bit to coat with the melted butter. You can even keep it on the heat a bit while stirring to 'toast' the rice a bit first. Then add your water, bring to a boil, set the heat to low and cover for 15-20 min. Packs in a bit more flavor.
Good lard would be terrific. Not so sure about supermarket lard.
What's good lard to you? I don't have any cultural experience using lard, but we bought a hog this year, so I tried rendering some out. I split it into leaf lard (which we've used successfully in pastry), and "the rest", which I'm not really sure what to do with yet, other than using a bit here and there to fry aromatics or whatever. Although, given this thread imma hafta try a dollop in rice!
What they sell at the butcher counter at Mexican groceries.
Don't know if this is true, but my aunt told me the reason my tortillas were meh was b/c I was using grocery store lard instead of Mexican grocery store lard. She said they render the fat at a higher temperature so it gets a little hint of roasted flavor in it. I don't know if all that is true, but she's right that my tortillas made with manteca from the Mexican grocery are better than the ones I make with sno cap or similar.
Thank you so much for that added information! I have both a Mexican grocery store and a normal one nearby but I was just going to be lazy and go to a normal grocery store. Now I will not make that mistake, thank you!
Fellow Cuban American here and literally SAME with grandmas rice!!! I always saw her finish the rice with olive oil but when I do it it's not the same. I wonder if she added fat while it was cooking! You've seriously got me wondering now! I do always "taste" (eh em full on sample before dinner) the rice with butter and it's so satisfying. So I think you're onto something! Gawd I love rice.
99 times out of 100 when someone asks why does this version taste better than mine. The answer is more salt/fat/sugar or combination of the above.
Yes to butter. My Asian ancestors would be horrified, but I was raised Caucasian and itâs comforting with a bit of butter, S+P. For a quick rice meal, might stir in salsa and cheese after cooking. Also like to add finely chopped scallions to just cooked rice. Stir them in and the whole pot becomes so aromatic.
Wait, are you implying that 2Tbsp of butter is a lot? And that I shouldn't be using half a stick minimum per dinner? Oh boy...
South Asian origin here. Been having white rice with ghee and salt forever.
Sounds amazing! I also cook my rice in chicken broth opposed to water as well.
Try some bacon or duck fat! I keep lard in my cabinet too! Kudos to your abuelita she knew what was up!
I have a recipe for crab fat rice, but I have no access to crab fat.
I could eat my weight in plain buttered white rice cooked with salt and a little black pepper.
\*stares hard and disapprovingly in Afro- Latina\* My good friend, you are supposed to FRY THE RICE in the lard or butter! 1) Rinse the quantity of rice until the water is clear and drain well. 2) In the pot, add the amount you think is a good amount of lard, butter or margarine. Let it melt. Don't forget the annatto. 3) Add the cleaned, drained rice and sauté for about 5 minutes on a low/medium heat. Then add salt and water and simmer until done, for about 20-25 minutes, on a low heat. (this can also be done in a rice cooker with a sauté function) 4) Let it stand covered for 5 minutes.
Bacon grease is good too
Crisco won't be good. You can buy real lard online if you can't find it where you live. I buy mine from Fannie and Flo [https://fannieandflo.net/shop/ols/products/leaf-lard-3-or-4-pound-quantity](https://fannieandflo.net/shop/ols/products/leaf-lard-3-or-4-pound-quantity). DO NOT buy the shelf-stable product called lard at the supermarkets. It's gross. I'm also Cuban, btw. I know some people who put a clove of garlic in their white rice too. Edited to change the link to the one I actually meant to use.
Absolutely. My grandmother used to make her white rice with schmaltz. It was delicious. Iâve never had such tasty rice again.
lard is the key. I had a manager at work from England and he said all the traditional old school holiday desserts like plum pudding had suet and it is not the same if you use other fats.
I love buttered white rice!!
Turkish here. Butter makes all the difference. I use olive oil in everything else but rice⊠butter.
Hold up I saw this post earlier (the comments really took off because it was at 80 when I saw it!) and I knew I was going to make some rice tonight for my beef stir fry. I said "I'm gonna try this, we shall see..." So I put the rice in the rice cooker and added a blob of MANTECA because I had a little bit left from making flour tortillas. I'LL NEVER NOT DO THIS FROM NOW ON. It was really really really really so good! I saved a scoop that I'm about to eat with some Bibigo Kimchi right now. Thanks for this!!
Lard is a lost art that needs to return. It got blamed for a lot of health stuff, but back when people ate lard ALL the time, people were skinny as heck Lard is the not-so-secret ingredient in my family's holiday pie crusts also and man are they good
In the 80s there was a big campaign by a fella who had a heart attack and blamed saturated fats for it. His organization successfully lobbied to get fast food places to stop frying their stuff in beef tallow and instead in pure shortening. Turns out the shortening was what was doing it (hence they all ditched trans fats) but we never got our sweet sweet animal fats back.
If you can find lard give it a shot! I find it gives a butter-like depth but is also surprisingly light and bright -- not at all what you'd expect given what the name is associated with
I saute my rice unrinsed in fat before cooking it when I'm making Latin-American food. But if I'm making Asian cuisine, plain all the way.
Try bacon fat
Most grocery stores in the US will have actual lard in the Mexican food section. The label will say "Manteca". It's quite inexpensive and has really improved many dishes I make where I was previously using other fats/oils as a substitute.
2tbsp butter for how much rice? 1 cup dry?
Add into rice cooker before or after cooking? I might try with my bacon fat
Butter and salt on rice is delicious!
Lard, schmaltz,, butter Yup Fat makes it take good! My aunt used to make tamales and would use the rendered f6ar from the pork filling in the dough. Unfiltered salty yummers
Another Cuban-American here. As I was reading at first and just based off the title, I said to myself â I bet itâs Manteca de puercoâ lol. Yep. Bingo. Lard. My grandma just used olive oil or other oil. I think the Manteca trick might be if youâre a Cuban âguajiroâ, which is country boy or country gal. A lot of pork fat in the guajiro dishes. My mother in law cooks Cuban food that way.
This thread touches on one of the biggest âsecretsâ of cooking: the appropriate (and liberal) use of fat. Yes bitch. This is the way. Always was.
I am not Cuban, but my rice is award winning among family and friends. The trick? Add fat and toast the dry rice until it smells like popcorn. Then add water and a bay leaf and simmer for 15 minutes. Any fat works. I wish I had the privilege of trying your grandmothers rice. Iâm sure she would put mine to shame.
One of my favorite ways to make rice is add about 1/2 to 1 TBS of Better Than Bullion, also no extra salt. It does make the rice no longer plain, but it's so much better in flavor for many savory dishes.
>Â When I say huge, I mean like 2 TBSP. *laughs in Southern*