And the waving wheat, it sure smells sweet...

Shadow_Ferret

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I want to talk about grains for a moment.

For most of us, that means wheat, or rice, or corn.

But a while back I thought I might be gluten intolerant (took the tests and they came back negative). So for a while I was trying to avoid wheat and was trying new grains. (And from what I've been reading, wheat might not be good for us in general.)

Things like Quinoa, brown rice, wild rice, buckwheat and so on.

But I grew up with Rice-a-Roni and Uncle Bens. Grains already packaged with dozens of different flavors (full of sodium and calories).

So, so far, I've only tried these new grains if they come pre-packaged with flavor (garlic parmesan, for example).

Because honestly, I have no clue how to serve grains that have taste. If I make rice, its plain and the family dumps a ton of soy sauce on it to give it flavor.

So what do you do with grains? Barley, oats, and those mentioned above? Do you have any recipes to make grains a tasty side dish, and most likely healthier than a pre-packaged box?

Thanks.
 

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Shadow_Ferret

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I grew up with the dinner meal consisting of a meat, a vegetable, and a starchy side dish -- often potatoes in one form or another, or the aforementioned Rice-a-Roni. Some people even serve mac&cheese and there's a whole line of pre-packaged noodle side dishes from Lipton.

So I guess that's what I'm looking for, a healthier alternative to Rice-a-Roni or Noodle-Roni. Especially since grains are supposed to be a big part of a healthy diet. The ones like quinoa and amaranth are packed with essential amino acids, and others offer the Omega-3 &6 oils usually found in fish.
 

Myrealana

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Oh, and jasmine rice. What do you do with that? Does it taste like jasmine (whatever that is). I bought a bag but I'm not sure what to do with it.
Jasmine rice is sometimes referred to as Thai rice. You can use it anywhere you would use white rice.

I don't know what jasmine flowers or plants actually smell like, but I've heard that the uncooked rice smells vaguely of jasmine. I can neither confirm nor deny from personal experience.

It's a little stickier than other long grain rices like basmati, and has a slightly nutty flavor when cooked, especially if you brown it in some butter before adding your liquid.
 

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My wife and I make curries pretty often, we use brown and/or jasmine rice all the time for it. We don't do much with buckwheat, but we've ground it into powder and used it as a thickener in some porridge-like dishes. Also we've used Japanese buckwheat noodles in Asian cooking.

There are two dishes I like that makes use of Quinoa, both found in this cook book: (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0373892403/?tag=absowrit-20)
1) Spanish rice style; season it with a lot of chili powder, and cook diced onions and peppers with it. Makes for a good side dish.
2) Jambalaya; instead of rice use quinoa (or a mix of rice and quinoa)
 

Chasing the Horizon

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So I guess that's what I'm looking for, a healthier alternative to Rice-a-Roni or Noodle-Roni.
Then what you need to do is learn the different spicing pallets and how to make your own sauces, since really all those pre-packaged noodle and rice dishes do is give you a pre-measured spicing packet or sauce mix along with the grain. For example, if you wanted to make an equivalent to beef Rice-a-roni, you'd cook up the rice or small pasta, then add beef gravy and the spices that compliment it. You can look up the spicing for just about any flavor online, not to mention find about a billion sauce recipes.

I'm not aware of any grain which has enough flavor to just eat plain, but once you get the hang of spicing things yourself, you'll save a lot of money and a lot of sodium.
 

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Recipe from the back of the bag of quinoa in the pantry:

Quinoa with toasted almonds and cranberries

1 cup quinoa
1/2 cup sliced blanched almonds
1 cube broth stock (bouillon cube)
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 tsp salt
1 cinnamon stick
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup dried cranberries

Soak quinoa for half an hour in cold water. Rinse thoroughly. On medium heat, stir and toast the almonds until golden and set aside. Stir and roast the quinoa until dry and turning color. Transfer toasted quinoa and toasted almonds to 2 quart saucepan, add cranberries, boiling water, broth stock cube, salt, bay leaf, and cinnamon stick. Bring back to boil, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand 5 minutes. Fluff with fork and serve.

Makes a nice side dish.
 

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When you cook rice, cook it in stock, not water. It's lovely in chicken stock, with a bayleaf or two or some thyme. Just a lovely light flavour addition.

derail/

Not knowing the smell of jasmine? That's so sad! Come here and stand by my fence on a jasmine evening. Life won't be the same again./derail
 

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I like to cook plain white rice with red lentils: they take the same amount of time to cook, and the lentils collapse into a nice peppery mush, giving you a slightly sticky food which I think is delicious. And it's a complete protein, too, which is good.

Whole wheat grains mixed into rice prior to cooking are great, too: they keep their texture and are nutty. Lovely.

I'd use about four parts rice to one part wheat grains; perhaps two parts rice to one part lentils.

Pearl barley: add a small amount (enough to cover the palm of my hand) to stews: it cooks up over a couple of hours into a plump, delicious grain. Very nice. You can use pearl barley to make a sort of risotto, too, if you like, instead of rice.

I don't think these are flavourless, or that they need additional seasonings and spices to make them palatable: good rice, properly cooked (so it's not mushy) has a lovely fragrance, just as it is. But if you're interested in making more of it, look for risotto and pilaff recipes (creamy and dry, respectively).
 

L M Ashton

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Jasmine bushes grow in the wild all over Sri Lanka. Seriously. Side of the road, middle of the jungle, empty lot next door. Everywhere. I loved it. :)

Most of the rice I serve is plain, but it's also served with curries. Curries, generally speaking, have some kind of gravy/sauce, and that gravy gets mixed up in the rice along with the curry. See, every mouthful is a bit of a curry and a bit of rice. The rice is not meant to be eaten by itself. It's meant to be eaten with the curry. Or the sambol or mallung or...

For special occasions, ghee rice will be made. Cook an onion, garlic, curry leaves, a green chilli or two in some ghee until the onion is soft. Add it to the rice, dump it all in the rice cooker along with the appropriate amount of water and salt and cook until done. You can also add pandan.

Another thing is porridge, which is something Muslims in Sri Lanka (and a few other countries) eat at breaking fast in the evening during the month of Ramadan. Rice (or oats or barley or whatever), coconut milk, green chillies, chicken (or beef or goat or whatever), onions, salt, pepper (and whatever else sounds good to you) cooked together until it's done. Serve sambol on the side - sambol being green chillies, a bit of onion, freshly shredded coconut, and salt ground together. Congee is another variation. Lots of Asian countries do some sort of porridge variant.
 

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I grew up on beans and rice, and cornbread. We've been incorporating more quinoa into our diet here; but I'll never give up my grandmother's rice dressing (we learned early not to call it "dirty rice" around her. :D)

So, I'm going to do something I've never done before--give out her recipe, which you can adjust for the number of servings you want:

Rice Dressing

6 cups steamed rice
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground pork
3-4 regular green onions, chopped
Salt to taste
Black Pepper to taste
Sage to taste
Parsley to taste

Cook rice (yield 6 cups) and set aside. Cook ground beef and pork loose in skillet with salt, pepper, parsley, and sage. Add green onions just before the meat mixture is done so that they retain some shape and color. Toss with rice. Serve hot and fluffy.

So simple to make. Somehow, so addictive.
 
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Shadow_Ferret

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Oh, thanks. Great ideas. Sadly, I've o ly HEARD of curry. To me its some exotic Indian dish. I've never ever had it and don't know much about it.

My mom grew up in a German-American household and the majority of her dishes were bland. So spices are still a mystery to me, even though I experiment a lot more than I used to.

For years my go-to cookbook was a Kansas German-Immigrant one. Lots of starchy comfort food. No quinoa. No curry. No jasmine rice.
 
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L M Ashton

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I'm so familiar with German immigrant food. Grew up on it.

Here's the thing, Ferret. If ever you're here, as in where I am living, I'll feed you all the home cooked curry you can stand. The lovely thing about curry is that there's a HUGE range of what constitutes a curry. Curries from north India are not remotely similar to the curries of south India, which are way different from Goan curries, which are wildly different from Bangladeshi curries, which are way different from Jaffna curries, which are way different from Colombo curries which are... Well, you get the idea. Even if you don't like, say, south Indian curries, chances are still good that there are curries that you will like from somewhere else. :) Curries differ on more than geographic lines - they also differ along religious lines and even familial lines. Massive massive range of curries. And while they, generally speaking, all have spices of some kind added, not all are hot by white people standards. (Sorry, but it's true - white people, in general, can't handle as much heat as those from the Indian subcontinent. I'm one exception, but I've always been a freak of nature.)

If you want to get started with curries, I can point you in the direction of some that have been popular with absolutely everyone I've fed them to. :)
 

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Ferret, you have to try Indian food. It's absolutely delicious. Really. Not spicy-hot if you choose the right dishes. Do it. I love it!
 

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Sorry, but it's true - white people, in general, can't handle as much heat as those from the Indian subcontinent.

I once went to a food exhibition here with a friend of mine, who's white. He and I stopped at a stall where the vendor was offering samples of what he called one of the hottest peppers in the world, the ghost pepper.

My friend immediately stood behind me and said, "She'll try it!"

The vendor looked him up and down and said, "What are you, a wimp?"

"Yes, I'm a wimp. She'll try it!"

I tried it, and while it was hot, it was nowhere near as eye-wateringly murderous as some coconut sambols I've tasted. It didn't even come back from the dead an hour later to re-scorch my taste buds, either.
 

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Pearl barley: add a small amount (enough to cover the palm of my hand) to stews: it cooks up over a couple of hours into a plump, delicious grain. Very nice. You can use pearl barley to make a sort of risotto, too, if you like, instead of rice.

Mmm. I love pearl barley. It takes a long time to cook, so if I'm not making a dish (like stew) that also needs a long time, I often cook the barley plain and freeze it so I can grab it straight from the freezer. The ready-cooked barley goes into soups, stews, curries, noodles, whatever I'm making. :)
 

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L M Ashton

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I once went to a food exhibition here with a friend of mine, who's white. He and I stopped at a stall where the vendor was offering samples of what he called one of the hottest peppers in the world, the ghost pepper.

My friend immediately stood behind me and said, "She'll try it!"

The vendor looked him up and down and said, "What are you, a wimp?"

"Yes, I'm a wimp. She'll try it!"

I tried it, and while it was hot, it was nowhere near as eye-wateringly murderous as some coconut sambols I've tasted. It didn't even come back from the dead an hour later to re-scorch my taste buds, either.
As I said, in general. :D

I'm as white as white gets, and I LOVE Sri Lankan food, which ranks right up there among the hottest cuisines in the world. Sri Lankans tend to stare at me, jaws open, as I chow down on what they consider to be far too hot for the western palate.
 

Chasing the Horizon

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If you want to get started with curries, I can point you in the direction of some that have been popular with absolutely everyone I've fed them to. :)
I'd definitely be interested in a recipe for a good, mild curry. I was also raised on German/Dutch/English food, but the conditioning took on me and I can't stand food that leaves my mouth burning. I love the base flavor of the curries I've sampled, though, and would love to have a mild recipe my English family and I could tolerate.
 

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I made a millet pilaf tonight, even though that's not the sort of thing I usually cook. (Yeah, I know I said I NEVER do this above, but I guess I do, just very rarely.) It turned out pretty well even though I didn't follow a recipe. Something like this (for 2 people):

1) Toast 1/2 cup millet in a pot at medium heat for about 5 min.
2) Remove millet from pan. Add olive oil, 1 clove chopped garlic, 1 small stalk celery chopped, 1/3 of a sweet potato chopped into <1cm cubes. Sautee a couple minutes.
3) Add millet back into pot, along with 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp ground coriander, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, salt, pepper, small handful raisins, and 1 cup water.
4) Bring to boil, cover, and cook about 1/2 hr.
5) Add 1 Tbsp or so chopped cilantro, stir, and serve.

Or something like that.
 

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I'm going to also recommend a Japanese-style curry as a nice starter. Very different flavor to Indian curries, and not really spicy. Closer to a stew, and so not as different from American style foods.

It's also really easy to make. You can usually find some at a big grocery store these days (though Asian markets will carry it). You literally just heat up some beef, carrots, onions, and then add water and potatoes. Once the potatoes are done, you add a cube of curry mix (don't lose it lol) and stir it until it melts. Keep adding until it's a nice, thick consistency. Just serve on top of plain rice and it's super delicious.

Something else you can have rice or grains with is stews. In the US, I'm used to just having stew in a bowl, but something you can do is instead serve it on a bed of rice. It's very tasty.

I'm also a huge fan of sushi rice just for the smell and taste. I think it tastes better than long-grain rice, though I'm not sure sushi rice would be considered healthy. Jasmine and Basmati rice are both super tasty on their own, too, though.

Something else fun that you could do if you wanted a simple way to eat rice that's really yummy is Japanese-style onigiri. Literally just rice balls. It helps to have a rice that's stickier to do this, so normal long-grain probably won't work well, but the shorter grains are fine. Cook the rice, then tear off some plastic wrap and scoop a bit of rice into your hand. Make a depression and put something tasty on the inside (I love dried salmon and mayo, or tuna, but you could seriously put just about anything), then add a bit more rice on top and just mush it together until it's a ball or triangle shape. Sprinkle on a little salt and you're good to go. If you like seaweed, you can put a strip of seaweed around it to help it stick together (the seaweed is my favorite part!), but you can also eat it plain. It's also something you can throw on the grill if you want. Just give the outside a little spritz of soy sauce and grill it until it's crispy on the outside. It sounds boring, but I just love rice balls, especially when the rice is still fresh and warm. Just the sprinkle of salt is enough to season it and it's just lovely.
 

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brown rice

Chick peas. Flavorful bean goes great with brown rice. Oddly, raisins too if you wanna give it a sweet flavor. Restaurants do this sometimes. Me, not much but it is an interesting combo. (Just a few scattered in the mix.) It's an individual thing. You've just gotta experiment around till you find a mix you like. Goya beans are fine: the ones in the plastic bags. You just gotta let them soak for 2 hours. Tomatoes too. Finally, toss out the salt shaker and substitute it with pepper.
 

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I like teff because the grains are really small and it cooks fast.


Quinoa is sometimes a ROYAL PAIN to wash (and if you don't wash it thoroughly, the saponins that coat the surface of the grains will make the whole dish taste like... soap). The grains are small enough for some of them to go through my strainer and fall into the sink... but if I try to line the strainer with anything, it's difficult to get all those grains off the wet fabric or paper and into the pot. It is lovely, though. I've made quinoa "salad" with a bit of olive oil, a splash of condiment balsamic vinegar (not the syrupy really expensive stuff), green onions, shaved parmesan, black pepper, toasted walnuts, and caramelized onions.



I have an indian curry recipe if anyone is interested. I developed it with the help of my best friend (who is from Nepal, but her husband's family is from India). I posted it here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Spicy-Chicken-Curry/ (and even won a $250 wok that I never use)

You can skip the hot pepper completely if you want it to be mild. Please don't use regular "curry powder" to make curry like my younger sister tried to do a few years ago. :)

Please note that ancho chile isn't from that continent, but it's an easier to find substitute for mild chile flavor than some of the other options.
 

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I grew up with the dinner meal consisting of a meat, a vegetable, and a starchy side dish -- often potatoes in one form or another, or the aforementioned Rice-a-Roni. Some people even serve mac&cheese and there's a whole line of pre-packaged noodle side dishes from Lipton.

So I guess that's what I'm looking for, a healthier alternative to Rice-a-Roni or Noodle-Roni. Especially since grains are supposed to be a big part of a healthy diet. The ones like quinoa and amaranth are packed with essential amino acids, and others offer the Omega-3 &6 oils usually found in fish.

That stuff is mostly just loads and loads of salt and MSG. Given what you said in other posts, you might consider moving away from just trying to replicate the crappy stuff and expanding your palate.

I like bulgar and buckwheat, which are both, well, wheat, most. Farro is good, and rices are great. I think all of these have a lot of flavour on their own, but if you're used to the Rice-a-Roni thing, you probably won't, so maybe you can step down gradually.

First, toasting any grain before cooking brings out a lot of flavour. I do that to rice, grains, etc. Just put the grain in the pan you're going to cook it in, dry, and jack the heat. Toss occasionally. After a few minutes, it'll give off a nice nutty aroma and start to brown. Toss more frequently until a decent percentage of whatever it is has gotten a bit golden. Then add water or stock and cook as usual.

You can make basic pilafs, by, say, toasting some rice (try a nice mix, brown, white, wild), and adding a squeeze of lemon, butter, some raisins or currants and slivered almonds to the water.

If you want to start closer, there are better versions. Lundberg makes great rices and boxed rice meals. Some have a mix of rice and quinoa or rice and lentils, with spices, some are just rices with spices. There's a rice with black beans that has a nice, smoky chili seasoning, a mild curry lentil and rice one, etc. They're really good and while they do have a bunch of sodium, they've got WAY less crap than a Rice-a-Roni thing and they're all whole grains. Their stuff is at Whole Foods, if there's one near you.

If you want pasta, well, I'd think about what you like in the packaged things. I don't know what those are, really, but if they have spaghetti or whatever, you can make that so much better by doing it yourself, with better ingredients, easily.


I'd definitely be interested in a recipe for a good, mild curry. I was also raised on German/Dutch/English food, but the conditioning took on me and I can't stand food that leaves my mouth burning. I love the base flavor of the curries I've sampled, though, and would love to have a mild recipe my English family and I could tolerate.

You might try going to an Indian market and asking someone there to recommend some spices to do a mild curry with. Curry powder is like chili powder; it's just an uninspired, generic mishmash. Same as you'd use different chilis in a dish, it's better to work with the components of curry themselves.

I've made a nice fruit curry that's got a little hot but it's counteracted. I don't have a recipe, sorry, as it's just kind of 'make a curry, with fruit,' and if I want to make a curry I go buy spices. It's a simple buttery base with spices cooked in and usually banana, apple, apricot, pear, pineapple, coconut, whatever's around. It's really good, light, dump it over some rice...