In the past few weeks the Tivo appears to have exhausted the current stock of Good Eats shows that are in heavy rotation. Rather than three or four a night, we are down to just a few per week. My original impressions of the show still stand, but I have one relatively minor complaint. He really doesn’t know anything about rice.
Maybe it’s his upbringing. Maybe it’s because there are no Chinese restaurants of any quality in The South. Whatever the reason, one is forced to this conclusion after watching his show about rice. The show begins with a loving tribute to risotto, a tribute which is well-deserved. Risotto is one of the few Western rice dishes that is actually worth eating. He then takes a bizarre tangent into brown rice salad. Why I don’t know. Why eat brown rice? More importantly, why eat it cold? The only discussion of proper white rice comes when he dismisses the rice that you would get at a Chinese takeout joint as “tasteless long grain white rice.”
Now, I don’t know what passes for Chinese food in Atlanta, but if you get long grain white rice at a Chinese restaurant I suggest you find another Chinese restaurant. Such a thing is unthinkable. That’s like getting Olive Garden pasta and declaring that the Italians don’t know much about noodles. Good rice is short (or medium short) grain and cooked so it sticks together but is not mushy.
The pinnacle of good rice, in my not so humble opinion, is sushi rice, which gets no mention at all in this show. Note, I don’t mean the gluey crap that you get at most places in the U.S. I mean, in the U.S. people make sushi with brown rice. We are not to be trusted. I mean the ethereal little balls of perfectly cooked rice, seasoned with whatever they season it with and rolled lightly under a perfect piece of fish to add just that little bit of zing and texture. You bite into it, it’s there, and then it just disappears at the same time as the fish.
Good sushi rice is so important that you have to apprentice for years in sushi restaurants in Japan before you are even allowed to touch the rice. This, my friends, is the most important ingredient on the plate. Not just some “tasteless” white side dish of limited character. It is the main attraction!
So, I’m tired of the abuse that white rice gets from the food industry at large. I’m tired of “alternative grains”. And most of all, I’m tired of being served really bad rice. I think Alton and the rest of the U.S. food industry could stand to do a little more studying on this subject. I’m hoping he has covered these issues in a show that I haven’t managed to see yet. After all, if we can’t spread a true understanding of good rice to the public at large, the Italians might take over with their fancy pasta, in all those strange awkward shapes. And we can’t have that.
Sushi had it’s own show and sushi rice was covered there.
An older rice show had long grain white and rice pilaf.
Look them up on goodeatsfanpage.com
and I like brown rice too, so nyah
I really really hate sticky rice. For me, rice should not clump together and should be just a little bit undercooked — enough to get a little crunch when you eat the rice. Basmati and some forms of Thai rice have the right starch content for this.
Undercooked not sticky rice is an offense against god and man.
That said, Indian rice is usually OK because of the great sauce that’s all over it making it stick together.
Heh, couple of years ago, a friend of mine who was in Japan decided to have non-Japanese food once during the trip, so he went to an Indian restaurant. Getting short-grained sticky rice with the meal, he talks to the owner about it for a while (the owner is Indian), and the owner explains that due to Japanese tariffs on rice, all he can get is short-grained sticky rice. Which is, of course, a total abomination and just an indication, as far as the owner is concerned, that nobody in Japan knows what good rice is.
Of course, this ignores the fact that the only acceptable starches are oats, potatoes and barley. If you’re eating anything else, you’re a pervert and probably some kind of criminal as well.
I love oats, potatoes, and barley. The only problem is when I eat them I am hungry again inside of 1.5 hours.
When I was a kid the wonderbread children always talked about how horrible whole wheat was (because it wasn’t sweet and had flavor). I’d like to say the white rice brown rice is the same issue (and nutritionally I think it is), but brown rice only seems to go with a few dishes. I like it with bean-tomato dishes. It isn’t bad with golden curry. But it just doesn’t seem to work with a lot of finer sauces.
I love Alton, but I grew up in New Mexico and I must admit I’m not too impressed with his forays into New Mexican food, or Mexican food as some ignorants folks call it. His grounding in Southern Cuisine is obvious and his science is always spot on.
However.
We must all face the fact at some point in our lives that Alton Brown is not a god but a mortal being, you are facing it now and I sympathize.
Be strong little soldier.
Another place where Alton’s upbringing shows is his tea episode.
Sweet tea is an abomination and an affront to all the Indians and Chinese that were exploited/enslaved/massacred by the English and Dutch. If I want something that sweet, it damned well better be a Mint Julep (the pinnacle of southern mixology).
Actually, I can sort of forgive sweet tea as just a different drink altogether that they happen to call “tea”. Best to pretend there is no tea in it at all. Also, the asians now have their own version: bubble “tea”, which really has little to do with tea.
Sweet tea is definitely its own cat, and should not be compared to regular tea in any way, ecept that it shares all the same potential failings (overbrewing, underbrewing, too old, etc.) . As for white rice, my only beef with it is just that it should come with a warning label in America. People never seem to pay any attention to the high glycemic index of the stuff (comparable to white sugar), and as a result vast numbers of folks either gain weight or can’t lose weight from eating the usual ludicrous US servings of it. The fact that so many dieters eat rice or rice cakes/chips strikes me as supremely ironic. That said, risotto and decent sushi rice are fantastic, and the only way I’ll bother with brown rice is when good wild “rice” is mixed in.