My latest thing has been making batches of flavored rice that is often served with Hainan chicken rice. The chicken was fine, but I can’t stop making the flavored rice and eating it with everything. Not exactly low-cal, given it has some chicken fat for flavoring but it is so good! I make it using the same Tamaki brown rice in a rice cooker and it turns out really well.
Please tell me more.
If you aren’t making the Hainan chicken, where do you get the chicken fat to make the chicken rice?
The left over fatty chicken water is usually good for a few batches of rice for me. I also buy a lot of whole or at least skin-on, bone-in chicken parts, so I tend to get a good bit of bones and or skin to make fresh broth.
I have been using cauliflower rice in lieu of traditional rice and I’ve got to tell you I might not ever go back to traditional white rice. This weekend I made cauliflower rice risotto and this was my first time making it, it was good enough that with some tweaking I can see this being just as satisfying as traditional risotto. I’ve also abandoned traditional fried rice in favor of fried cauliflower rice. This is probably the best food substitute I’ve experienced.
Not to mention mashed cauliflower in lieu of potatoes!!!
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Do you need to precook the cauliflower before doing risotto or fried rice?
I used to use fresh cauliflower which I would rice/steam etc. However I abandoned that simply because there is sufficient fresh pre-riced and/or a wide selection of frozen pre-riced cauliflower that I only use that now.
For the fried rice I use the Green Giant riced cauliflower with peas and carrots (I also add a bag of an Asian mixed vegetables) to my fried rice and for the risotto I used a seasoned riced cauliflower I found. Using this recipe as a guide. My only “problem” with the recipe was I pre-made it because I was entertaining a group of people and didn’t have time to “try a new recipe” at the last minute, so I pre-made it about an hour before serving and needed to reheat it. I’m not sure if that affected the consistency but it wasn’t as “creamy” as I would have liked. Flavor was still good, but I’m a stickler for details, I will try this once again when able to eat it immediately, if not I will include some heavy cream to the mix.
https://www.greengiant.com/recipes/skillet-vegetable-medley-risotto/
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I never precook my cauliflower rice
I buy a whole head of cauliflower, discard the hard stems, pulse in the cuisinart, usually freeze half ( they freeze well), caramelize onions in EVOO, add garlic, add cauliflower for a few minutes, S/P, then serve with grated parmesan cheese. Alternately, I would add soy sauce and frozen mixed vegetable ( carrots, peas, etc) as Chinese fried rice substitute.
It takes only. a few minutes to cook. Have never tried it as a risotto substitute
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I like it, too. It makes really good fried rice!
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I like cauliflower rice too, but I find there’s a distinct flavor difference between the store bought one and homemade - my guess is that the store one is almost entirely stems, whereas at home it’s a mix of florets and stems.
If I’m using store-bought (hello convenience!) I cut it with regular rice and/or quinoa to offset the stronger stemmy flavor.
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I’ve never noticed the difference in flavor, but that’s because I’m usually making it as some kind of stir fry dish, so the natural flavors are hidden.
I had not heard of Kokuho - is it under the umbrella of Calrose (which I also had not heard of until I started making sushi rice at home)?
My default is indian basmati. I bought some jasmine to mix it up (and for asian applications), but I didn’t enjoy it enough to restock. I also have calrose for sushi-related preparations.
Of late I’ve been mixing grains - half quinoa, half basmati. More filling, smaller portion consumed.
I also read somewhere that cooking rice with fat and eating it after it’s sat in the fridge for a while cuts the glycemic load by half, so now I add butter or oil or ghee and cook more, then reheat as needed.
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Yes, broadly speaking. All the Kokuho varietals are medium-grained “Calrose” types. There are several varieties, all originally developed by Koda Farms iirc, but they themselves only grow the Heirloom Varietal on their own “home” farm, and that’s not easy to come by here on East Coast (and it’s relatively expensive wherever it is available). The other varietals have always been grown by other farms in various places in California, but at this point, I’m not sure Koda Farms even owns the rights to the generic Kokuho name any more. (Or maybe they’ve just licensed it to Nomura?) But there are two others sold under thename that are widely available pretty much everywhere: a “regular” Kokoho (aka Kokuho Yellow, after the yellow-bannered bags its packaged in) and the supposedly superior Kokuho Rose (not named for, but sold in, bags with a distinctive pink banner).
As for the business about chilling rice to lower its glycemic index, I don’t think the fat is actually necessary to the process but yes, chilling cooked rice (permanently) “retrogrades” much of the starch making it differently-digestible than in its original cooked state. (Fwiw, I think I also remember reading that the retrograded starch encourages beneficial gut flora, but I’m very hazy on that. And fwiw, I think the retrograding business is true for potatoes, too (or maybe just some varieties of potato), but I won’t swear to that either.)
Pls visit for elucidation
http://www.kodafarms.com
Note , the Kokuho Rose® distributed by our trademark licensee, Nomura and Co. is a similar type of rice with our original KR55 strain in its genetic makeup. It is not the pure heirloom strain grown exclusively on Koda Farms. Our original heirloom Kokuho Rose is distinguished by the prominent placement of our Koda Farms house logo (see our “header” which appears at the top of this page) on all packaging.
While KR55 and Calrose do share a common ancestor, saying that KR55, aka Kokuho Rose®, is a Calrose variety *is like saying that a thoroughbred race horse and a donkey are the same thing.
I have been using kokuho rice, rose variety for the past 15 years or so. In my humble opinion, It is superior to the others, ( jasmine, basmati) , even the yellow variety. It is reasonable , 15 pounds for about 29.99 at Asian stores, and currently, even at Costco.
It is not good for fried rice as it is medium grain, a little bit sticky. I typically cook 6 cups in my rice cooker, refrigerate left over in individually packaged films, then pop it in the microwave for about a minute or two. It comes out as though it is freshly cooked.
in a study, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26693746/
conclusion is that cooling of cooked white rice increased resistant starch content. Cooked white rice cooled for 24 hours at 4°C then reheated lowered glycemic response compared with freshly cooked white rice.
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That basically confirms my understanding of the different “Kokuho” rices. It’s unfortunate from the consumer perspective (but not surprising from the marketing perspective) that the “mainstream” “Kokuho Rose” has the same (base) name as the Heirloom Varietal; I’ve seen a lot of confusion in forum and blog posts on the Web among people who apparently don’t realize or understand that there’s a significant difference between the plain-old “Kokuho Rose” label and the packaging with the more specific phrase “Heirloom Varietal” as well.
In terms of price and availability, when you mentioned buying and eating “Kokuho Rose” rice yourself, did you mean the Heirloom Varietal actually grown by Koda (what they call “KRSS” in the blurb you quoted), or the “regular” Kokuho Rose distributed by Nomura? The latter is widely available nationwide, but the former isn’t very widely available outside California/the West Coast - at any price - and it’s quite expensive to have it shipped anywhere by the few online retailers that do sell it…
This is what I was referring to wrt fat addition:
And the bit about cooling:
Though I didn’t know until recently that parboiled rice (which has been available for a long time) also has a lower glycemic index (though you can’t choose the variety you like best in that case).
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For people with digestive issues like IBS, Crohn’s, reflux - increasing the resistant starch can worsen symptoms. Just a heads up for anyone who might do this on the regular.
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Yes. Also if you have issues with fiber, gas, etc.
This is more for those of us who like rice but not so much the carbiness of it (ie 
)
Interesting. I was aware of the retrograded/resistant starch result of chilling cooked rice, but hadn’t come across this info about the impact of fat on its digestion/absorption. Though I guess it’s really not surprising when consider the relatively slow digestion/absorption of fats in general.
I have always been using Kokuho Rice by Nomura , with the emblem for the last 15-20 years. I find that great for my Chinese dishes as well as others except for paella, fried rice. I seldom cook risotto although I have stock those rice as well. The other Nomura product I use is their glutinous rice for dessert ( Filipino Biko with coconut) or I use it during thanksgiving as stuffing to make my modified Lo May Gai, ( glutinous rice steamed with mushrooms, sausage, dried shrimp , tiger lily bud to wh ice I add filipino style chicken and pork adobo) as stuffing since my husband was a celiac ( gluten enteropathy)
As for the Kokuho yellow, I find that inferior to the rose. I have only tried that once.
I understand you may want the best but the KRSS is too expensive for me to try. I do not like to use any rice for paella other than the bomba variety as I can tell the difference. However, I do not cook paella as often as I cook rice, so the extra expense for the bomba makes sense to me
I hope this clarifies matter for you.
