Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Adventures in Cooking: How Not To Make Minute Rice

In my house now, we have a rotation of who cooks dinner. My parents cook two nights, my sister and her boyfriend cook two nights, and I cook two nights, with the guidance of my mom. On Friday, everyone fends for themselves. It's a pretty good system.

Since I have Mom helping me, I am slowly learning how to cook things more complicated than Mac and Cheese (which tastes perfectly fine when made with lactose-free milk) and hot dogs. I was going to add spaghetti to this list, but I kind of set a noodle on fire when I made spaghetti two weeks ago.

Last week, I was making Orange Chicken from a recipe on the Food Network website. Everything was going fine, it was cooking away happily in the oven, when my sister comes home. She asks what we're having and I tell her, rather proudly, "Orange Chicken"

Lemon Chicken Breast
Basically this, but with some alterations to make it orange instead of lemon

"And what with it?" she asks. And at this question my mind stops comprehending English for a minute. What with it? What goes with chicken? What does she mean?

"Um...broccoli?" I say, drawing out the word. "Aaaand?" she asks again. This is becoming a maddening question. Mom realizes what she's asking and takes pity on me. "Oh, a starch." Right. Duh, we need rice. But rice takes forty minutes and the chicken will be done in ten. "Uh, I think we have some Minute Rice in the cupboard," Mom says.

Mwhahaha, don't I look simple? I'm gonna make you wish you used the rice cooker.

Sure enough, there's a box of Minute Rice. I pull it out and look at the side to figure out how to make it and the number of portions to make. Mom leaves me on my own to do this, mostly likely figuring, incorrectly I might add, "How can she screw this up? It's Minute Rice."

I get the water boiling, add the correct number of cups of rice, and then place a plate on top since we can't find the lid to cover it. I leave it alone to the required time. After the buzzer dings I lift the plate off and hot, water steam drips onto my leg. Probably an omen of bad things to come.

I throw the plate in the sink and look in the pot...and then call Mom over. "Something went wrong with the rice." For, instead of fluffy, perfectly cooked Minute Rice, there was instead a vat of rice that was a little...soggy. There may have even been extra liquid in the pan still.

I'm going to taunt you for the rest of your life.

Mom stares, perplexed at the rice for a moment. Then she turns to me and asks, "How much water did you use?" I look at her confused. How much water? Does it make a difference? I shurg and make the vocal equivalent of "I have no freakin' clue".

Apparently, rice is not like pasta. You can't just throw any amount of water you want in with the rice. Rice is the baking equivalent of the starch world; everything must be precise. Since I didn't measure the water, now I have really wet rice.

Which Mom valiantly tries to salvage. We put the rice in the microwave, covered, for 2 minutes. Then, we try putting it back in the microwave for another two minutes without a cover. Mom explains as the microwave whirs that the reason it doesn't matter how much water you put in with pasta is because you drain it. So, when she takes the rice out and it still looks watery, I ask, "Why don't we drain the rice?"

"I'm so mocking you right now"

So we did. Yes, I can actually say that I have drained rice in a colander. This seemed to get rid of most of the excess water. And the rice wasn't completely inedible either. But when Mom said she wasn't going to keep the leftover rice, I was the first to agree. I bet that would have been the moistest rice ever when reheated the next day though. ;)

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