Chinese Restaurant-style Rice

The Chinese may not prefer their rice quite as sticky as the Japanese, but if you prefer to use chopsticks, regardless of your country, you are going to want your rice to stick together to some degree. Chinese restaurants in America have a solution, and they do use the good-old rice cooker, though theirs are humongous.

To achieve the desired consistency, they combine in some secret-society proportions, a long-grained rice for texture, a jasmine for fragrance, and a medium-grained rice such as Arborio to hold the cooked rice together.

A recommended combination of rices-- realizing proportions are not written in stone:

1/2 cup long-grain (our house favors Carolina, and there is no need to rinse this)
1/4 cup jasmine (Jasmati, a US product, or an Indian brand is available in most grocery stores)
1/4 cup medium-grain (we use arborio cause we have it on hand for risotto)

To the above amount of rice mix, which totals one cup (a note to help only any Woolworth rejects' browsing this site) add two cups of water or, preferably good chicken stock. Homemade chicken stock is terrific if you have some on hand. Then, just push the button on the rice cooker. After the button pops up, any rice is best if allowed to sit for a few minutes. Of course, the beauty of the rice cooker, is the rice can sit far longer than that and still be wonderfully hot when you serve it.

A word of caution: if you plan to use the cooked rice in fried rice, do not use the medium-grained approach. Cause that is too sticky for the consistency desired when you stir fry the rice.

You can find the above recipe(s) by tapping here on the Home Cookin' index.

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