No-spike rice

We make quite a few dishes that need rice. But we sometimes have problems with spikes which we think are due to rice. So we have experimented with many different types of rice and recipes. We have found two that work for us: no spikes!

Please note: all quantities are by weight unless specifically mentioned.

Lower carb rice

Sometimes, we look to minimize the number of carbs, and we still want something good, and that won’t spike. We found both with Trader Joe’s Brown Basmati Rice, where we can use 3x the volume of water. The way we do it:

  • rinse the rice in a fine sieve for 5 minutes under cold water

  • let dry for 5 minutes

  • put in a rice cooker

  • add 3x water by volume (we measure it, it needs to be reasonably precise). For 300 grams of rice, we use 1,125 grams of water (because for us 300 grams of rice have the same volume as 375 grams of water) – but that will slightly vary depending upon where you live (that’s our experience)

  • cook until done

  • add salt, and a generous amount of olive oil

  • mix well, and eat.

This one is so good that is is hard to pass on trying it when you dish it out into a serving bowl :slight_smile: When cooked, we get 7 carbs/oz of cooked rice.

Higher carb rice

Sometimes we need more carbs in a meal (like after sports). The difference is not huge, but we find a bit more carb density with Trader Joe’s Brown Jasmine Rice. Using the same recipe, but using only 2x water (for 300 grams of rice, we use 750 grams of water), we get about 9 1/3 (9.33) carbs per ounce cooked.

Neither of these rice varieties spike with us – but, of course, YDMV. For us, the cause for not spiking is not exclusively using brown rice, because we have tried other kinds of brown rice (like short grain Chinese brown rice, for instance) that spike us.

Why we use Trader Joe’s as a source: we find that the varieties we get at our local supermarkets don’t hold together as well when cooked. The Trader Joe’s varieties look beautiful when cooked and have almost exclusively whole grains left, rather than fractions of grains.

Do these work for you? What are your tricks for making no-spike rice?

[EDIT] edited to clarify that all quantities are in units of weight

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@Michel - We have been going between the jasmine, basmati, brown, and of course the regular white. lol.

So with the Basmati, how much do the cooking directions come into play? What do you find if you just throw it in the rice cooker and let it go normal?

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I use (white) basmati rice, because it’s the cheapest kind I can buy in bulk (Costco) labeled gluten free that isn’t from the US (arsenic concerns). For me, it doesn’t cause a spike that I know of (I’ve never eaten it just on its own, but with other things I KNOW are behind the rise I see). Definitely a YDMV thing, as I’ve talked to others who spike with basmati rice, brown rice, you name it.

I rinse mine, soak for 10 minutes, rinse again, then put in the instant pot. From what I understand, rinsing/soaking is supposed to wash off some of the starch, so it seems like that would help with BG impact?

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When shopping for Oatmeal, we are careful to only get Gluten-Free as cross contamination of Oats is common. However I have never heard of gluten contamination of Rice?

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I gave up on rice a long time ago but there’s a TJ’s just a few blocks away from our hotel here in Boise so I may have to get some to try!

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I’d love to know if it works for you! We went without rice for a long time, but now that we have found something that works for us it tastes better than it did before:-)

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EH asks: when you say 7g of carbs per ounce of cooked rice, do you mean by weight or by volume?

I was trying to explain that I figured you’d weighed the final cooked product and THAT is what you’re referencing. But Eric noted that sometimes a recipe will state 1/2 c and it might mean 8oz.

I ask: how did you figure out how many carbs per ounce in the final cooked product?

(Ironically, we don’t even eat rice at home. Or out very often. Because it’s generally a high that won’t come down. I need to refer to @TiaG’s instructions on Thai and Indian from another thread and try again.)

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I can walk to my Trader Joes, but don’t normally shop there since the boys can eat some food, and Costco is cheaper, but we will give it a try. We haven’t avoided rice per se, but when we get Thai, Cody will only eat 1/4 cup in his curry, so it isn’t really even noticable.

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@Thomas, I’m not sure if there IS a huge concern (I don’t know if rice is usually packaged in same facilities as gluten containing grains? Sometimes I see packaged rice beside, say, barley in the same packaging), but I always try to stick to things labeled gf regardless - my antibodies were weakly positive last year, despite the fact that I’d been GF 3.5 years and never tested positive before, even when eating gluten, so I became extra careful to try to eliminate any possible source of cc. I don’t even eat any oats or things with oats, even if they’re certified GF, except if I know they are purity protocol oats (side note: y’all are able to do oats with t1? I still haven’t figured out that dosage!).

I will say that’s what I mean by I do see a spike from something else sometimes when I eat rice - if I’m eating Thai/Chinese food, I know I’m spiking because of the cornstarch, sugar, etc in the sauces (and a delayed spike from all of the fat!).

I’m curious on the oz/c thing, too. I NEED to start measuring by weight more, but so far just grab a measuring cup to measure out my portion (dosing for 12 carbs per 1/4c is what I do for basmati).

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Totally. Bummer you are getting hits on the bloodwork. Hopefully you are able to resolve that without it causing issues.

Oatmeal is really not an issue. Any carbs in the morning need a 45 minute pre-bolus or we spike. And when I say “spike” - I am not talking about some little bump that only goes to 200. More like the spike that shoots off the top of the Dexcom. But if we pre-bolus the morning and wait for the cgm to start its downward curve then oatmeal is fine and just dose normal as we would anything else.

When we first had the Celiac diagnosis, we were told to entirely avoid oats even if labeled gluten free as a certain percentage of people with Celiac will react to oats even if they do not contain gluten. But after being gluten free for maybe 2 years? We slowly added oatmeal in to the diet starting with 1/4 cup at a sitting to see how it worked. Turns out it is fine for us which is great!!!

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Almost certainly @Michel has to mean by weight. If that was by volume, that would mean it was 28g for a quarter cup which is an unreasonable number of carbs for that amount of rice.

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That’s awesome! Ironically, I never enjoyed oatmeal as a child/teen, but the couple of years prior to this LADA diagnosis I began to really like it. I’m determined to figure out the dosing soonish.

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Is this the right one, or the organic quick cook one?

image

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That’s the one!

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That would work as long as you use the right proportions of rice to water. The washing/drying is to avoid that crummy-looking foam you get when you don’t rinse the rice. Also, who knows where that rice went :slight_smile: : you know what India’s sanitation system is like.

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Yes. We measure everything by weight unless specifically mentioned, sorry. Thanks to you, I clarified the original instructions. We find that volume units never work precisely or well enough, so we have switched fully to measurement by weight when carbs are concerned.

We are becoming just like Europeans! I really wish all of our recipes used weights, it would save me so much time since we like to try 1-2 new recipes each week.

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I feel the same way (LOL almost typed weigh… :laughing:)! Though I’ll admit there was something recently I weighed after measuring, and the end portion was less by weight than volume, and I was kind of bummed to be eating less of whatever it was (probably ice cream)…

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Kim, we had a real problem with that for quite a while. We were making a very easy mistake over and over, and under-counting carbs every time. You just caused me to write it all out here:

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Ha! I sit around plotting how to make Michel write more interesting things about cooking and diabetes. Thanks!! When I’m not sitting at the table with Eric trying to figure out the effect of alcohol and fat on blood glucose, I will read that one!

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