Rice Around the World

the most important ingredients worldwide. Rice. You know, rice is one of those things you know, don't take it for granted. It's so incredibly important. You know, over half the world considers it like their staple food. Someone you must feel like every single culture has a rice culture when it comes to cuisine and um, you know, there's different different sizes and shapes, and they're used for different things, and they are cooked in different ways. You know, whether they're

long grain or medium grain or short grain. Rice is you know, the first kinds of rice that I think about are, well, there's long grain rice. So you cook like a pea life, so to speak. Basically, you know rice, then you you can add some onions or garlic or some aromatics to it or not. And then you add

some sort of liquid. It could be some sort of broth, or it could just be water um some kind of stock, and then you, you know, you you bring it to a boil, you cover it, and you turn it down to a simmer, and you you basically make fluffy rice. And then you know, I think about you know, the shorter green rice is rice? Is rice is plural? Or is it rice plural? Is plural? Rice is plural? Okay, so I won't be saying, right, thank you for my

grammar lesson, Sophie, appreciate that. What's the difference between brown rice and white rice? That's it? I mean no, but I mean, you know, look, I mean rice is basically the it's a seed of like a species of grass. Okay. So, and I guess people think of brown rice is just like a healthier version of white rice. I don't really know that to be true. It just seems that way because it's got that none of your flavor to it.

But so when I think of different rice, I mean I think a brown rice too, But I eat less brown and rice than I eat white rice. But so then you know, there's a long grain rice so we just talked about, which is like that sort of classic peel off. You make that fluffy rice, you serve it with every dish you can imagine. And you know, one of the great things about rice in general is it could be flavored by so many basically anything. And we'll get to that in a little a little bit, um,

a little bit later. But you know, like as I was saying, like rice is probably you know, one of the most important food crops period in the world globally from a nutritional standpoint. Um, you know, from caloric intake. You know, it a little bit goes a long way. It's it's something at you know, a lot of it has a lot of sort of peasant origins because it

can feed a lot of people for very little money. Um. And then you can be incredibly creative with it and of course make a taste however you want to make a taste. So you know, then there's like things like arborrio rice, which is you know, a shorter green rice that basically as a creamy texture. It's it's cooked differently traditionally than than a rice peel off. Um, you're basically adding hot liquid. Again, it could be water or some broth or some stock, etcetera. You know, in any iteration.

It could be vegetable broth, or it could be shrimp stock, it could be chicken stock, you know. And you basically you're adding as you're stirring the arborrio rice, you're adding the the broth until it absorbs it. And basically what happens is it just it absorbs its volume by like three times, so it gets really plump um. It basically just kind of drinks all that all that broath as you're adding it until it softens doesn't and it takes a while. You know, it takes somewhere between you and

forty minutes, depending on all your variables. Yeah. So one of the things that I get made fun of a lot of Beat Bobby Flay is how often I make crispy rice really yeah, because it's like one of my go to winning moves because it's so good. Well that's why I make it. I Mean, one of the things that people miss sometimes when they're doing Beat Bobby Flay is that you have to think about how the judges

are gonna taste it. You know, they're gonna take a bitter two, and they're gonna have the first impression immediately. So having contrast to texture in a dish is just as important as what it tastes like it looks like, you know, And a lot of people come there and they have all these bells and whistles on the dish, but they don't mean anything. It's like the judges would rather have like something crispy or crunchy than some white shruffles, you know what I'm saying. That's that's that's it's all

about making decisions. So I mean, one of the things that people don't realize is like we have a hundred and fifty people on that are on that show, between staff,

audience and contestants and all that, and everybody's rooting against me. Yeah, everybody, all the people that work for my production company and everybody, and so like you can hear like when I break out the cast iron pants and make crispy rice, like there's a collective like h in the control room because they know that I'm gonna that's gonna doesn't guarantee a win, but it's your secret weapons, one of my secret weapons,

so we're gonna be anyway. It's also one of my secret weapons at home because it's so good and so like when I make things like curries and things like that, I want to make rice with it. Sometimes I just like do like a fluffy rice, but something like having that those little crispy bits along with the fluffiness of the rice is really so good. Yeah, So we're gonna

make crispy cocdut and sky and rice. But it all has also has cilantro in it, some lime zest, very fragrant, crispy crunchy, and you start with rice that's already cooked. So this rice I made with coconut milk. Sometimes I just make it with coke like on sweet and coconut milk. Sometimes I use coconut milk and water. Like a lot of times i'm beat, That's what I'll do so it's not it's not too overly fatty, you know. Um. And then what I do is I quickly, you know, because

there's a forty five minute time when I'm beat. I cooked the rice and I spread it on a sheet pan, and then I put it in the in the freezer to stop it from cooking. And then I you know, towards the end of you know, before before I'm gonna plate, like maybe ten minutes before the time is up. I get a cast iron pan and on the stove, get it high heat, put some canoa oil in there, and then I start crisping the rice. Okay, making rice is hard, Yes,

it is, because it's a balance. It is a balance, and you know, my rice doesn't always come out perfectly. I mean again, like when I'm cooking like classic long grain rice, you know, I basically to me, what would happen? You know, this is one of those things where it's like there's little things that make a difference in your final products. So like my basic rice recipe would be like, let's say it's a cup of rice. So I take a cup of uncooked rice, long grain rice, and I

usually I usually put some aromatics. So I put aromatics in everything. So like onions, garlic, let's just say onions. Let's just say onions and garlic. So I tell it, put the rice over it, let it get a little bit um uh wet from the from the oil that you're cooking in, the aromatics in and then so for each cup of rice, I put in about one between one and three quarters and one and seven eights of liquid.

So again, it could be chicken stock, it could be shrimp stock depending on what I'm cooking, or could be water. So it's just less than two to one. What are you putting it in a pot like a sauce pot. So so basically a lot of recipes will see you'll see two to one. I like a little bit less liquid because I don't want my rice to be overcooked.

Then you bring it to a boil and then you cover it and you turn it down to a very low simmer, and somewhere around fifteen minutes, take it off the heat, leave it covered for about five minutes, and then you take a fork and you fluff it. And what I do is I usually take it out of the pan and lay it on a sheep pan so it's one even layer so that the bottom of the rice isn't cooking more than the top of the rice. You see what I'm saying, because it's still hot. That's

that's sort of a very basic rice recipe. Then what do you do with the sheep pand do you put it in the refrigerator? You just leave it out depends if I'm going to eat it sort of momentarily at least leave it out. If it's if I'm going to make crispy rice or I'm going to eat it later, I cover it and put it in the refrigerator. I tried to make rice in the oven once. What do you mean I put it in the oven? You can do that didn't come out right? Why do you do

that to throw it out? I don't know. I've read it online a lot of people well now and like rice makers are so popular, so many people have those in their homes. But I in a in a pinch, I got a Trader Joe's and I buy the frozen rice and I put it in my microwave for three minutes and it's it's perfect. Oh god, I told you you are not gonna like how I made rice. I just listen. One of the things that I love is that you're cooking more on your own because you're interested

in doing it. This is not this is kind of a newish thing, correct, Because when you were a kid, you had no interest. You just like just feed me. So now that you're an adult on your own, living your own life, you're actually trying a lot of things at home. But like you can easily just text me and ask me a question and it literally will like it might not be a perfect answer for you, but it's gonna take of the aggravation out of your mind. So why don't you do that? I know I should,

but also it's like, I don't know. I don't think that I would tell you to go to Trader Joe's and buy frozen rice. That's probably not what I would tell you. It's pretty good, you'd be surprised. You know what else I like in terms like when talking about rice dishes, I love mango and sticky rice delicious the best I hadn't I never had it until I went actually went to Thailand and it was I ate it every day. Yeah, so good. One of the things that we haven't talked about yet is, uh, I'm a rice

pudding fan. You are, Oh my god. It's probably it's probably because I know a lot of people don't like rice pudding. I do like rice pudding, but there's it's that's a texture thing for me. Okay, I mean it's creamy, yeah, but I just don't like the little you don't like the rice running through the creaminess. Well, when I was a kid, when I was in grammar school, your grandmother.

My mom, Dame Dorothy would take would pick me up from school and we go to these Greek diners after after school, and you know, she would basically feed me lunch, and they the Greek Diners had the best rice pudding. And she used to like, she used to try to get like like my mom was like this. You know, my mom was like a hot mom. You know, she was like very pretty and you know, very fun, and all the guys and the diners were always in love

with my mom. So she would try to coax the rice pudding recipe at him, and she tried to make it a few times at home and it was got awful and I'd be like, Mom, what happened. She's like, I don't think they're giving me the right recipe. They're keeping it from me. So I'm so like I've had I've I've kind of like secretly every once in a while gone into quest to make really good rice pudding like the Greek diners made in New York City, and it's so good and it has sentamon on it, which

is one of the things that I love. Of course, I don't like raisins in my rice pudding, but I like I like I like, I'm a rice pudding fan for sure, Um, but it has to be good and then um, you know, and then like when you think about like the most famous rice tissues in the world, obviously Pia comes into comes into mind. And you know Pier is one of you know, it's it originated in Valencia, in Spain. And do you know what the classic Valencian

is probably the original one. It's um, it's actually rabbit and snails and sometimes chicken. Yes, that the classic Valenciana. But you know, I would say the most popular one, and now is you know you would see is like obviously the rice first of all is cooked with saffron, and sometimes it's like trees are running through the rice.

And then there's like different kinds of shellfish, you know, it could be lobster or shrimp, you know, clams, muscles, you know, whatever you have available, and then chicken in there as well. And then a lot of times what they do is they make a lemon alioli or ioli alioli is the Spanish version, same thing. Basically, it's like a garlicy saffron mayonnaise lemon and then they when they mix the pie up, they kind of lacquerate with this alioli at the end and it just counts. Yeah, it's

so good. It gives it a nice richness obviously gives it that burst of lemon flavor as well. But the key to it is what we're saying before is the bottom of the of the piea pan is the sakarrot or the crust, and that's what gives it an amazing texture. And of course you can make you know, pie a is in all kinds of you know, different flavors. Especially there's a few different a few different rice that you can use for for pia. Colaspara is one, bomba is one.

They're very similar to aar boreo rice. They're kind of short and plump, and again they really absorb a ton of liquid, so they you know, they basically if you start with if you start with a cup of colas bar or bomba rice, you're getting like three or four cups. I mean, it really expands and it basically just drinks up that liquid and that's what what what makes it so flavorful. I can taste the coconut in this rice. Yeah, don't forget the coconut. You know, has like some inherit,

sweetness in it, sugar in it. So yeah, but you can't want to burn it. So what I do is, so now the rice is in the canola oil. You can hear its crisping, and I take the back of a metal spachela, not the rubber one, of the metal one, and I push it down so it's even and so that there's so that all the surface of the pan and the oil is hitting as much of the rice

evenly as possible, and that's going to create crustiness. And this is this is one of the things like you'll see like crusty or crispy rice dishes, and lots of different cultures like in Paea it's soak rot, which is the bottom of the crust. A lot of Persian rice dish dishes have that crustiness as well. It's really you know, I didn't create this, but I just love it. And I'm gonna slice of some scallions, so coconut scallions. You know, you do do things like you can put like ginger

in hills. Well it would be nice, but usually I mean I'm serving this as a foil for something that's very high in flavor. So some kind of curry of some sort of like a red curry or a green curry, or even like an Indian yellow curry or something like that. And then I take the zest of the limes and

I put it in there as well. Okay, so you so you just kind of so you're basically frying the rice basically, you know, And and now I can really start to smell the coconut too, you know, because it's it's cooking, and as I said, you know, there's some inherent sugar in there, so from the coconut milk, and like it's uh, you know, it's going to help caramelize through the race of tiny bit. So would you just

serve this in in the cast iron? You couldn't serve it in the cash iron, um, but usually I get it out of the cash iron, so it's stops it from cooking. I put it. I just put it in a decorative bowl. You got a lot of those, yeah, um.

And then of course you're like, you know, we were talking about like the fluffier rices, the more classic fluffy rices that we see create to serve with like stews and you know, curries and kind of brothy dishes could be vegetables could be meats, could be fished, doesn't matter. I did. I did a story about this small business that that started during the pandemic called Golden Rice. Did you seem to posted about that? Tell me about that. It's a Persian dish um to sheen to sheen. Yeah,

I want to make sure I'm pronouncing that right. Um. But it's this mother daughter that started this this pop up and it almost looks like a cake, like the way that they present the cake. Yeah, with the way they present the right because they're basically doing what we did was, which is they crisp it up in a pan, but they don't break it up right. They keep it as a like a like a exactly, so it has the shape of the pan, but it's crispy on all sides. It's so good. It's so good, Oh my god. And

you can you like you have to. People are obsessed with it. Now you have to. You have to order ahead of time. Really, do you know what dirty rice is? M I don't know. It's chicken livers. Okay, you see that in Louisiana a lot. I love it. It's it makes like like like a dirty martini is made with you know, vodka, or gin with with the olive juice, so it gives it that sort of like that dirty kind of look and feel and flavor. So chicken livers, which I have to say, I'm a huge fan of

chicken livers. Chicken livers and rice is so good at dirty rice so good. That's not really my thing. I like serving that with duck. I used to do. I used to serve that at Bar American duck. Also spicy tuna. Crispy rice is like, oh yes, I don't know, one of the most popular dishes ever. Yeah, that's good. I mean, that's that's like. I also like, I am such a sucker for fried rice from like a Chinese restaurant with a little shrimp. Do you get tenn ingredient fried rice?

That's my go to? What does that mean? Just every ingredient. It's like shrimp, broccoli, you know, ten ingredients. I'm like, oh, ten ingredients. Like, I'm such a sucker for like marketing on menus, like if it says crispy I'm ordering, yeah, right, if it says ten ingredient fried rice, Like do you want ten ingredient fried rice? Or do you want just pork fried rice? I mean like I feel like I'm

getting a bargain. Yeah, I'm being nine free ingredients. There's a there's also at night Market they do like a crab fried rice and that is so good. Oh my god, at night Market, that's right, that's near Yeah, yeah, down the street. I like that. Yeah, I haven't been there in a while. Oh my god, let's go. Let's go for that. Food is really spicy. I like that. Yeah. So then you know, while the rice is cookie, I sprinkle some of the scullions on top, some of the

wine zest. Very powerful. The smell is very powerful. It's very freevorite, salt and pepper. Yeah it smells good. Yeah, it smells great. So you kind of like take a peek at what's happening with the rice. I don't think it's quite ready yet. Now, you know, cash iron is great, and a non stick pan works as well, but cash iron, you know, obviously holds the heat really nicely. You can see that, you can start to see the edges of getting that's sort of golden crispiness. This stuff is like

so good. I love this, Like with a shrimm curry or a fish curry or a chicken curry, even like a duck curry is good. Curry curry. It's good. It doesn't have to be like dark. It just has to be crispy, because that's the two. Yeah. And also you don't yeah, see that's perfect. It's like you don't want all of it to be crispy. You want a combination

of fluffy and crispy. And it goes infest and then why are you doing that when we're gonna kind of flip it over and then do the outside just a little bit, and then the scions in the line I'm get distributed into the coconut rice. You also use coconut place on the tun if you want. Yeah, you love coconut, Yeah you do? You like coconut? Yeah you do? Not like it? Yeah? I know I like it? Now what happened? I don't know. You went to coconut school. All right,

that's good. Now I want to make curry, right. That's one of the things about having like cans of tie red curry and green curry and I covered all the time, and some coconut milk. You can make anything taste so good. You know, you have some proteins or even some vegetables and you combine the coconut milk, and you toast the curry paste and a pan a little bit at the coconut milk, some lime, some freshure herbs. It's I mean,

it's just such a delicious nous. And then if you serve it with this crispy coconut sky and rice, m hmm. I often find, like a lot of people, especially in the United States, they I think that there's a tendency to make risotto too thick and it should really be brothy. Do you make risotto often? Um? Often would be a stretch. I probably make it more than most people make it because I love cooking Italian food, but I cook pasta more than I cook risotto. Whenever I cook risotto, I'm

really happy I did it. Yeah, sometimes I forget to make it. I know, it's so good. I think of risotto is like a really good platform for shellfish, Like it's really good for shrimp, with scallops, with lobster, with clams, with oysters, so good, so good, I mean. And then but the key to those things is using the broths

that you're cooking with. So if you just if you just cook risotto, and let's just say, it's like, you know, using water, it's gonna be end even if you put shrimp at the end, Like the shrimp will taste like shrimp, but the rice won't take like taste like shrimp. So you want to use the shrimp stock exactly. And I always tell people when you go to your fishmonger, I know it's a pain, but it's worth it. By the shrimp with the shells on it. Take the shells off

the vane the shrimp. Then you have a clean shrimp. Doesn't take that long. Then you make and like literally as I'm cleaning them, I'm making shrimp stocks. I take the shells, I take some water, I take maybe an onion, maybe a little white wine, a touch of like tomato paste, and then you know, thirty forty minutes later, you know, you simmer it. You have beautiful shrimp stock, and it brings so much flavor. And they gave you the shrimp

shells for free. Use them. So in terms of like like like Risotto's people, well, I was just gonna say, people are intimidated by Risotto. So obviously it makes sense if you're saying that to me, because the bottom line is with Risotto, for the most part, you can't leave the stove. I mean you can for a second, but like the bottom line is that once you start cooking the risotto, you need to stay there and stir and add broth and stir and stir and stir until it's cooked.

And you know, basically what you do is you can start with some aromatics. You toast the rice in the pan. Was a little olive oil without creating color, just kind of get get the rice going. And then you you start adding stock in the broth. It absorbs it, it gets thick, You add more, it absorbs it. It gets thick, you add more, so you and you're constantly stirring, so you really have to watch it, and you're you're beating up the start so that the starts comes out and

it basically starts. It starts creating this creaminess without adding cream obviously to it. But like you know, I love making like mushroom risottos or one of my favorite dishes of all times, tomato saffron risotto delicious. I love making green risotto too, So you just have It's basically basically what you can do is it's almost like pesto wish, So like you have a pesto that you can add at the very end. Um so it has parmesan cheese

and it could have some nuts in. It could have olive oil, garl like lots of fresh herbs, or you can just do like lots of fresh herbs at the same time. I love making green pea risotto. Why, I don't know. Christina loves green peace so anything. I made a green peace soup that she said it was the best thing you share, right, it wasn't. But I mean, as long as she thinks so with it. Yeah, I don't ask questions exactly. I mean, think about it this way, Sophie.

So like if you're cooking like a like a leg of lamb or something, or some kind of roast, like when you serve red meat and you drink red wine, think about like having a red wine risotto go with those those roasts. That's course exactly, it's part of it. So like also buco, which is the classic millonaise Italian dish, which is veal shank that's braised. It's usually served lastically

with risotto millonnaise, which is saffron risotto. So you have the saffron risotto underneath the veal shank, and then there's grim alatta on top, which is like herbs and garlic, et cetera, alive oil, orange lemons, ask that kind of stuff. But that's a good dish too, That's a nice, hearty dish. So risotto can be an appetizer. It can be a main course on its own, just like shellfish or lobster risotto, which would be great. Or it can be part of a bigger story, you know what I'm saying, where it's

where it plays a sort of supporting role. I think you should make me some risotto. How about white truffle risotto that situation, or how about a coccio peppe risotto that sounds sick? Yeah, I mean lots of peccumino, cheese, black pepper, delicious down all right, you got it. Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Fla. Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungary is produced, edited, and mixed by Jonathan howk Stressler. Always Hungry is engineered

by Sophie Flay. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.