Cooking rice can sometimes prove to be a bit of a challenge, but there’s a simple ingredient you can add to the pot to make it taste a lot more flavourful.
Rice is a culinary chameleon, effortlessly teaming up with everything from poultry, beef and seafood to curries, stir-fries and an array of sauces. However, mastering its preparation can be a bit tricky.
Frequent blunders when cooking rice encompass not washing the grains thoroughly or messing up the water-to-rice ratio. This can lead to undercooked, soggy or parched rice, none of which are particularly appetising.
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And even if you nail all the basics, you might still end up with a bland side dish. Thankfully, there’s a simple solution. Penning her thoughts on food blog The Kitchn, connoisseur Emma Christensen divulged her top tips to transform «a dull pot of rice into something extraordinary».
Her initial trick to «infuse rice with flavour» is to toast the grains, reports the Express. «Toasting the dry rice grains in a smidgen of butter or olive oil before adding the water enhances their flavour and imparts a wonderful nutty undertone in the final dish,» she elaborated.
She suggested giving this technique a whirl with brown rice or whole grains like barley. Her second piece of advice involved introducing just one additional ingredient to the pan during the cooking process.
Emma proposed cooking the rice with chicken or vegetable stock, which could either be leftover homemade stock or a stock cube.
She said: «I sometimes find that using 100 percent chicken broth can make the rice feel sticky or overly-starchy,» adding: «I usually opt for a 50/50 blend of broth and water.
«This adds a layer of flavour and richness without going overboard.» Her closing tip is to infuse the rice with seasonings that mirror your main course, creating harmony on the palate.
The connoisseur implores kitchen adventurers to opt for whole spices when seeking understated notes and ground spices for more pronounced flavours. She divulges that she «almost always» tosses in a bay leaf, no matter the dish at hand.
