Recipes
This dish originates in the northern-most part of Kyushu, one of Japan's four main islands. Chikuzen-ni falls under the category of nimono, or boiled things. This is Japanese comfort food and this dish can be made on large quantities to keep in the fridge for bento-making, or as a side dish at dinner time.
Bento making is a great way to eat local, healthy food, and can be an outlet for your creativity. In order to keep it safe though, proper preparation is a must in order to avoid food poisoning, especially in a hot summer like the one we’ve had this year.
Our newest team member, holistic nutritionist and mom, Ichiko has shared her recipe for a modern western take on a Japanese quick-pickle recipe.
It is difficult and time-consuming to cook brown rice well. So we are excited to share with you a fantastically simple way to cook fluffy and delicious brown rice, it's called "bikkuri-daki."
The word bikkuri means surprise and daki means to boil, in Japanese. The surprise, which we will explain below, shocks the grains of rice into splitting their shells, and this results in a fluffy texture.
According to Wikipedia, this method has been used in the Tohoku-area of Japan for a long time, and before people started using specialized pressure cookers for hard rices, it was a well-known method.
Usually when cooking brown rice, you need to soak it for several hours to let it absorb enough water, and cooking usually happens in a pressure cooker or electric rice-cooker.
The bikkuri-daki method is a fast and easy alternative that yields great results.
Onigiri Society Quiz: let's learn about rice! Vol .58
This quiz is about cooking rice.
All that is needed to cook rice is water and heat. Cooking rice may seem easy, but if you want to cook really delicious rice, it is a difficult task that requires skills and knowledge. Each step of the rice cooking process has an important function that effects the flavour and texture of the final product. Without a solid understanding of the rice cooking process, even the the most highly ranked, and expensive rice will yield disappointing results, and you will have waisted your money on such a premium product.
The process of cooking rice can be broken down into the following functions: preservation, washing, draining, soaking, adding water, heating, steaming, and fluffing. Each step in the process has a meaning and a purpose.
Now, here is a one question quiz about fluffing rice. To fluff the rice, use a rice paddle to cut a cross in the cooked rice and then using the paddle scoop rice from the bottom of the pot and turn it over, gently mixing up all the rice so that grains from the bottom are now near the top of the pot, and vice versa. When, out of the following options, is the best time in the cooking process to fluff the rice?