Fucking Rice

White rice isn't that bad for your health (it's better than the same serving size of pasta), but you have to kinda experiment with it.

A lot of the new Japanese varieties that are out tend to be quite full in glucose so they're plumper and sweeter, but less on the nutrient factor.

I recommend Californian-Japanese short grain variety. They're a little drier but I think they get the job done. If you can find a grocer that would mill your brown rice from 100% bran to about 70% ish, I think you might find it a little easier to eat.

Personally, I love rice, but I limit myself to about 1-3 servings a day. A serving should be just about a cup of rice (that should be about half a cup of rice UNcooked).

If you're willing to try out brown rice, here's how you might enjoy it better:
1) measure water out to rice, about a 1.3:1 ratio. (I usually just do one cup on water to one cup brown rice, then add another 1/4~1/3ish of a cup of water)
2) soak the brown rice in water for at least half an hour to an hour
3) If you have a rice cooker with "brown rice" setting, use it.
4) If not, try using a pressure cooker to cook your rice.


And for the "seasonings" you're in search for, it's called "furikake" in Japanese. Try a search for it in google image or something... you should generally get an idea of it. They sell them at most general Asian Food markets, so it shouldn't be that hard to find. It's usually a combination of dried fish / vegetable and wee bits of sugar, salt, and you guessed it, msg. So yeah, probably not the best thing to use for a diet.

Now if you're looking for a more innovative way just to eat rice, then you can do stuff like... putting it in soup. I make my beef stew and chicken soup so that it's just perfect when I put it in a bowl about a third filled with rice, then I just pour the soup (or stoup, depending on how thick it is) over the rice.

There's also ochazuke as well (please search in google image, I'm sure you get an idea from that):
How I make mine is:
1) Use left over char-broiled salmon (the parts where it's not so black)
2) sprinkle salmon meat over rice
3) sprinkle little pieces of dried seaweed
4) Over all that, pour good strong green tea to the brim.

Or, you can go the lazy route and buy the store-bought pre-packaged stuff you can just add hot water to:



Although I do have to note from a Japanese stand point: we enjoy plain white rice because it's there to neutralize the taste of the main courses there are. We LOVE our sodium in our food. Notice that a lot of Japanese food have salt/soy sauce as a main component of flavoring to it.
A very typical Japanese meal setting would be:
1) one serving of fish, usually char-broiled with a little bit of salt (and diner can add soysauce to it depending on their preference),
2) a side dish of pickled vegetables (cucumbers or cabbage with scrap pieces of carrots comes to mind as most popular)
3) another side dish of vegetables (usually steamed or stewed in a sweet/spicy/savory broth)
4) Miso Soup
5) A bowl of rice

ALL of the above is served at the same time on the dinner table, unlike western catering style where meals would come out in courses or stages. You eat varyingly. You take a bit of fish, a bite of veggies, savor the flavor, then eat a little bit of rice. Then take a sip of soup, another chunk of rice. Eating in the Japanese-style might help you understand why we're able to enjoy it so much for it's bland taste as our main source for carbohydrates. It's because they like mixing it up. We don't just eat rice just by itself at a full meal. Rice is there to help neutralize the flavors of the main dishes so that you don't get bored with it. So it's a hand-in-hand thing.

My favorite way to eat rice though: 1 raw egg on a bowl of rice, with a little bit of soy sauce. I highly not recommend it considering the calories, the cholestrol, and the sodium factor if you're on a diet, but if you're heavily working out and are just considering the fiber/carb/protein content, there's nothing better. I also highly not recommend it for the salmonela factor. I have heard of poeple whom have actually had fatal deaths from it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Jpnezeshorty

There's also ochazuke as well (please search in google image, I'm sure you get an idea from that):
How I make mine is:
1) Use left over char-broiled salmon (the parts where it's not so black)
2) sprinkle salmon meat over rice
3) sprinkle little pieces of dried seaweed
4) Over all that, pour good strong green tea to the brim.

I forgot to put a WARNING label on this. This stuff works wonders for hangovers (or right after having way too much to drink) but as the sub-main ingredient in this is green tea, I highly suggest steering away from eating it right before you go to bed. It does have decent amount of caffeine.

There's nowhere I can't reach.