Favorite Brand of Rice?

[qualin]

... and to cook it...

To cook the rice, I don't mess around either... I use a Zojirushi NS-LAC05 Rice Cooker. I just throw the rice in, put in the right amount of water, but it doesn't have to be precise, plug it in, select the kind of rice, (Usually White) and then hit start. It does the rest.

These particular cookers are considerably more advanced than the ones you buy at your local Wal-Mart. They're Microprocessor controlled and use Fuzzy Logic to determine the best way to cook the rice, it's pretty neat.

Just so you can tell it's made for housewives, it plays "Mary had a little lamb" when you start it and when it's finished it plays "Auld Lang Syne". (I have no idea why, but it makes for a good conversation piece.)

http://www.zojirushi.com/products/nslac

 

[whirlcool]

We occasionally buy brown rice too. It makes for a nice change every once in awhile.

Rice in the freezer. About a year ago we had a problem with weevils in the pantry.
Looks like they came home with us from the grocery store in a cylinder or bread crumbs. After we threw away everything and disinfected the pantry and sprayed it with insecticide a few months later they were back. This time in a bag of flour we had bought.

I asked an exterminator about this. He said to put all flours, grains & cereals in the freezer for a week, then move it to the pantry. Since then we have purchased those rectangular vacuum storage containers (the ones with the single button on top) to store anything that could possibly have weevils before it goes in the freezer. A nice benefit is that if an item is "populated" by these critters you can see them when you put the goods in the storage containers.

For some reason it seems like the stuff we get at WalMart is most likely to have weevils in the first place. But the problem has never come back again.

 

[dirtybuck]

Unless it's in a microwave dinner, I eat white rice. However, when I'm making something, I always use brown rice (for now, Great Value or Mahatma).

I've also tried the Lunberg Long rice. I really like the flavor and crunchiness. It's a "change of pace" rice to me.

 

[appnut]

I'll have to check out the Lundberg, it's supposedly available at my local HEB.  But I'll also have to see how much more expensive it is given it's organic.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well I cooked up the converted rice with more water this time and it came out ok. But I still prefer regular rice to it. The excess will go to feed the koi and goldfish (they need lower protein feed when it gets colder... and they seem to love rice).

Also a flour beetle problem here. Little things about the size of a pin head. I think they came in some flour and because I had left several bags of flour opened they went to town. I'll have to try the freezing trick once the chest freezer gets emptied enough, lol.

 

[franksdad]

We're a house divided.

I love Uncle Ben's rice.  My wife likes sticky rice and perfers Mahatma rice.  So when I cook it's UB, when she cooks its Mahatma.

 

[mrb627]

Rice BRand

I can't for the life of me remember the brand name of rice I have been using. But the cooking instructions are more like pasta. Boil for 12 to 15 minutes and then strain it. Rinse briefly with water and serve.

It is foolproof as you don't cook the water out of it.

Unless it is flavored rice, I wont touch Uncle Ben's.

Malcolm

 

[washerboy]

Riceland Rice. It's the best and of course grown in Arkansas. My stepmother still farms rice and beans. Untill I told her to stop she used to bring 50 pound bags of rice to the house...talk about too much of a good thing.

 

[mrb627]

Mahatma Basmati

Is the rice I am currently hooked on.

Malcolm

 

[rapidry1000]

I like Golden Phoenix for Thai jasmine rice. For sticky glutinuous rice I like Koda brand. For most meals I use my Zojirushi fuzzy logic rice cooker but it takes almost an hour to cook one measuring cup of raw jasmine rice. The rice is rinsed and soaked before cooking which I usually prepare in the morning and the timer on the rice cooker is set for the rice to be done in time for dinner.
.

 

[hunter]

Several.

I buy:

Riceland white rice -- a good white rice.
Tilda Basmati -- it's really good Basmati rice
Calrose -- good sticky rice
Unfortunately I can't remember what brown rice brand I use but I *think* it is Riceland.

Having a GF spouse we have quite a bit of rice around.

 

[whirlcool]

50 lb bag of rice...

We have a woman who lives down the street that has several 50lb bags of rice and a number of bags of red kidney beans. She doesn't intend to eat them.

She said it's her "money".

I asked her why she think's it's money? She said that eventually Obama is going to declare marshall law because of all the occupy wall street shenanigans and that our regular money will be worthless. We will then go to rice and beans for our monetary means. The beans are the dollars and the rice is "your change".

And she is serious!

 

[joe_in_philly]

I have been very happy with my new cheapo Aroma brand rice cooker I found it on sale for only $35. It has setting for white or brown rice, time delay, plus a couple of other settings I haven't used. While it is not nearly as nice as a Zojirushi, it does an admirable job considering it is about 1/10th the cost. It takes longer to cook than my old magnetic switch rice cooker, but it results in better rice. Four cups (8 cooked) of brown rice can take nearly 2 hours from start to finish.

While brown rice or other whole grains have a different texture and taste that can significantly impact the way a dish takes, I am slowly decreasing the amount of white rice we eat and increasing whole grains.

Since my partner likes rice, we place extra rice in individual serving containers and freeze them. He can just grab one and microwave a couple of mintues and it is as good as freshly made. We keep the lid of the rice cooker closed to maintain the proper moisture level of the rice, and place the leftovers into the individual containers and seal them immediately, allowing them to cool on the counter before freezing.

We generally buy white rice in 25lb bags, and for variety change up the type between Thai jasmine, the relatively stickier medium grain rices (like Nishiki or Kokuho brands), and Vietamese broken rice. We never get long grain (not sticky) rice. I usually add some barley when making white rice in an attempt to make it a bit healthier.

Even though they tend to be pricy, I prefer to get the whole rice grains mixed varieties instead of plain brown rice. There are a lot of asian grocery stores around me, but I think H Mart (Korean) has the largest variety of interesting whole grain rice available.

 

[sudsmaster]

The new Aroma rice maker looks like an improvement over the older model, as the new one claims to have some smarts in that it uses microprocessor control to monitor and adjust the cooking.

However since I already have an older model Aroma, which really works well only for white rice, I opted to get a Zojirushi Micom 5.5 cup model just next to it on the shelf at Costco the other night. My first try with it was brown rice, and it did great on that. Not a hint of scorching on the bottom of the rice, either. The Micom was only about thrice the cost of the the Aroma ($85), and since I've been wanting to upgrade for some time it seemed a good idea to do it. Past versions at Costco have been $120 or more.

 

[sudsmaster]

Beans and rice as money?

What a laugher that must be.

She'd be better off eating them.

And Obama better hurry up if he's going to declare martial law (over what???). If most conservatives are right, he's only going to last another year and a half in office, if that.

And there really is no need to worry about the currency. The big banks, which control the Fed, just create more money by issuing more credit on the fly. Even the government has limited say in how much currency is in the money supply. It's all smoke and mirrors, but rest assured that by design there is never enough money in the supply to pay off all the debt. Cause if we paid off all our debts the bankers would have to go find some other golden scam to play.

 

[qualin]

To Sudsmaster

Hey Sudsmaster,

Glad you like your Zojirushi. That was probably the biggest thing I noticed before we trashed or old Magnetic Sanyo Rice Cooker, nothing scorched on the bottom and a pot which was much easier to clean.

Mormons believe you should keep enough food around to last a year in case something horrible happens. You can live off of rice and beans for a long time... I can see why that lady wanted to keep around all that food.

 

[kenwashesmonday]

Carolina Long Grain rice.

 

One trick for making good rice is to use the same pot every time so you get it down.

 

Ken D.

 

[lordkenmore]

I generally buy out of the bulk bins at Fred Meyer. They have different sources, but the brown rice--what I mostly use--is, I think, Lundberg. Prices are good in comparison with bagged store brand rice, and when a good sale hits, the brown rice price can as cheap as bagged white rice. (Brown rice appears to be more expensive in general keeping with that fine tradition of making healthy choices more expensive, while less healthy, more processed choices cheap.)

I generally avoid Minute Rice. Actually, I have never bought Minute Rice, but have bought generic clones. It's convenient in a hurry, but I've never really liked it. Even if money were no object, I'd still cook regular rice when time permits just because it's better.