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:
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rinse the rice in a fine sieve for 5 minutes under cold water
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let dry for 5 minutes
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put in a rice cooker
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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)
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cook until done
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add salt, and a generous amount of olive oil
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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 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