I couldn’t go on the keto diet because I love my rice. One of my favorite meals consists of frying up some Portuguese sausages and eating it with hot white rice and some tsukemono on the side.
Since I now live alone, I just make one cup of rice in my Tiger rice cooker. I usually eat half of that and leave the rice in the pot on warm. If I take too long to eat it, it gets hard and crusty on the edges and mushy inside. Yuck. It gets thrown away – which is such a waste.
So my son (I wonder if I can call him my Portuguese son since he now lives in Portugal?) taught me a rice saver tip. I put the remaining half cup of cooked rice in a sandwich size ziploc bag, roll it up, and put it in the freezer. When I am ready to eat a meal with rice, I remove the rolled rice from the bag, zap it on a plate in the microwave for a minute – and I have perfectly cooked rice that is almost as good as when it was first cooked. As a matter of fact, because it is so convenient, I now make 2 cups of rice, eat my 1/2 cup, and put the remaining rice in 3 separate ziplock bags with date. SO much easier than starting from scratch.
Rice Snob
I am also a rice snob. I only buy short grain rice from the Rice Factory where they mill my order on the day that I place my order. I am signed up with my phone number and get points that accrue for discounts. Love it!
I recently discovered their Yumepirika crop which is longer than their short grain and super delicious. Sometimes short grain rice is too short so this new crop is perfect for me and I am addicted.
And here is a tip: If you call in your order or order online, you get DOUBLE the points for your order!!! Woohoo!
I’m rather in love with multi grain rice now that we get at Mamaya. I’ve never made it though. It’s such a wonderful idea to roll the left-over rice into individual serving sizes. That’s a fabulous tip. Thank you!
I love multi grain rice, too! And also haven’t made it.
Glad you liked the tip!
no offense, but, I’m kinda surprised that you didn’t know about the freezer thing. And, even if you only have 1 serving, it will keep in the baggie in the fridge a 2-5 days.
Since I’m by myself now too, I’ve been splurging on rice factory. I keep marveling at the sweet, white, translucency of the cooked rice. But I keep a bag of cheaper rice for when I make spanish rice or jook or stuff like that, LOL
No offense taken. I did know to freeze rice but rolling it and putting it in the freezer for individual servings was like a “aha!” moment for me. Duh! I also put it in the freezer right away unless I know for sure I will use it in the next few days. I use the good rice in jook. For fried rice, I use the really junk rice from Zippy’s. I never thought their rice was junk until I became a rice snob.
Living in a household with four other rice eaters, we usually don’t have the problem of rice going bad. When it starts getting crusty on the outside and mushy on the inside, which it rarely does, we will fry it with some garlic or perhaps some leftover meats and a bit of soy sauce. Mostly, before it gets to that point, we just put it in a tupperware container in the fridge and just microwave it as needed under a slightly dampened paper towel.
Never having grown up around rice, I’m definitely not a rice snob. I’ll eat it all without complaint. My daughters on the other hand get rice at various places and complain how it just isn’t like the rice we eat at home.
It’s good you aren’t a rice snob. Life is easier that way.
I love this.