Simple Veg-enabling Tips (1)

From time to time,
when I teach vegetarian cooking,
some feedback from students
indicated that many a time,
it's not the lack of recipes
nor it's the lack of ingredients that
hinder them in cooking a yummy vegetarian meal for their families.

In many instances, students would complain
that their brown rice are either too hard/chewy or too soft/mushy;
their red beans are never soft,
their smoothies are never smooth,
their avocados are always bruised!!

I later found out that it's due to some subtle, yet critical tricks
which are often not mentioned/detailed in recipes,
that compromise the perfection of their dishes in the kitchen.

Hence in this series of blog postings to come,
I hope to share a few tricks
to enable one to cook confidently in the kitchen =)


(A) How to cook brown rice to al dente (or QQ) texture:

- pre-soak brown rice with filtered water for 8-10 hours,
by summerging the rice 1 inch below water level
(this is not just to soften the grains, 
but also to remove acidity and to increase nutritional value)

- pour away soaking water, do a quick rinse with filtered water,
and drained off any excess water

- measure the soaked rice grains with a 160mL measuring cup,
and count the number of cups of soaked grains

- add in the amount of filtered water equivalent to the volume of the soaked grains
and cook in an electrical rice cooker (i.e. soaked grains: water = 1: 1)  <= this is critical!

* extra tips: consider adding one or two teaspoon of dried herbs
(e.g. basil, dill, cumin) to make the rice more fragrant!


More tips to come, please tune in :D


Buon apetito!
Kee Yew
pureland2012-at-gmail.com


.Veg Enabling-tips

{Learning Holistic Wellness for Wisdom and Compassion}