One Sec...
Rice With Stuff In It
Okay, admittedly that’s not really the proper name for takikomi gohan, but when it gets right down to it, that’s what it is: rice with stuff in it. That's even basically what the Japanese term means: steamed-mixed-up-rice (炊き込み御飯).
Let’s start with the basic recipe: put rice and water in the rice cooker, add some stuff, and turn it on.
Complicated, huh?
No, but seriously, let’s talk about this.
Rice: Home Style and High Style
Takikomi gohan is one of those foods that spans the range from home cooking to the highest-end kaiseki ryōri (Japanese ultra-haute cuisine). Actually, you don’t see it all that often in restaurants in between. But the reason you see it in kaiseki is because that cuisine is all about home cooking, memories of tastes in conjunction with the seasons, and all that. You would not believe just how complicated kaiseki is, because it’s so damn simple. Here on the left is tossed takikomi gohan with uni (sea urchin) at Roan Kikunoi, a spectacular and very subtly “new-style” kaiseki place.
Now you might not think, based on the recipe above (which is accurate, by the way), that you could really do high style with this, and you might think every home style version would be more or less the same. So to explain, I’ve got to talk a bit in the abstract, about what this dish means.
Rice in Japan and China (and probably elsewhere in Asia, but I only know much about the food cultures of Japan and China) is treated with a complicated sort of reverence. One of the big points is about the flavor of rice. We tend to think of rice as a background, something that doesn’t taste like a whole lot by itself, but in Japan and China it’s thought to have its own distinctive and wonderful flavor. You might compare this to the Italian perspective on pasta: they think our habit of dumping huge amounts of sauce on pasta is disgusting and backwards, because it masks the flavor of the pasta. We think of pasta as a vehicle, usually, and they think of it the other way around.
The flavor of rice, considered inimitable, is of course extremely subtle. It does get quite a bit stronger when it gets a little brown at the edges, which usually happens if you overcook it. The interesting thing, though, is that this browning also happens if you use an old-fashioned cast-iron pot (called a kaman) to cook it: the pot tends to get very hot and a little of the rice that sits against the bottom is bound to get a hair scorched and crunchy. This part of the rice is thought of with a good bit of nostalgia: it’s really the way grandma used to make it, you see, back before there were electric rice cookers in every home. The little bit of browning you may get at the bottom of an electric cooker isn’t the same — and that’s not just nostalgia, by the way, because it really doesn’t taste the same. Interestingly, I am told that Persians get like this about the brown crusty stuff on the bottom of pilauw (pilaf), which goes to show, I guess.
Another way to draw out the subtleties of rice is to cook it with other things that will complement it. In Japanese thinking, you want things that are fragrant, aromatic, but not sharp or spicy. A green flavor, as of fresh peas; an earthy-woodsy flavor, as of fragrant mushrooms — these are the sorts of things you want. Things that will stay themselves, will perfume the rice, but will not overpower.
The crucial thing, though, is the rice itself. You can pay much, much more than many of you would believe for rice here. They get quite nuts about it. What’s more, you can’t store it very long, especially in hot weather. If you ever wondered why there are so damn many 5-pound packages of Japanese rice, i.e. if like me you ever wondered why the Japanese do this when they could buy 50-pound bags at the rate they use the stuff, you now have your answer: they think it needs to be eaten with a few weeks of opening the bag, that’s why. They want “new crop” rice, fresh as possible. And, to be honest, it does make a difference — I just don’t think it’s such a big difference that I personally am going to make a fuss about it. But they do.
For Japanese rice, perhaps the most popular style is koshihikari. This isn’t a brand: it’s a breed. Since this is now being grown quite well in California, it should be readily available. Ideally, you want the freshest rice possible, which is easy: just look at the packing date. It’s not necessary to buy super-expensive rice unless you already know what you’re looking for and have a very subtle taste for it, in which case you don’t need my advice.
Dealing With Rice
A decent rice cooker is a wonderful thing. Inside the cooker, there is a little pot, usually nonstick, with lines impressed along the side and marked with numbers. You put in X cups of well-rinsed rice, then add water up to the X line. Close the cooker and turn it on, and in 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the cooker, you have perfect steamed rice. Many of them have other options: you can make sushi rice in them, or congee (rice gruel), or brown rice, etc. All of these require slightly different settings and different amounts of water, but it’s very simple. Just be careful to save any little measuring thing that comes with the cooker: Japanese cups are not the same as US or metric cups. You can also do what I did with my cooker at home: write the number of cc in a Japanese cup on the lid, with a permanent marker.
For reference: 1 Japanese cup = 200 ml
As to brands, I recommend Japanese. I like Zōjirushi a lot. I tend to be a bit skeptical of Chinese brands. That may be unfair, but many such appliances have a habit of breaking.
Then there’s this handy-dandy little cheapo thing I got here for ten bucks: it’s a combination rice-storer-and-measurer. You pour rice in the top. When the button is up, it measures precisely one Japanese cup of rice into a little slot in the bottom. When you push it down, this much rice dumps in the tray. Then you push it up again. You put however many cups into the tray in the bottom, push the button up one last time, and pull out the tray. Then you dump the contents in the cooker, add water up to the appropriate measuring line (also marked by cups of rice), and turn on the cooker. What’s more, the rice stays free of dust, bugs, and everything else. When it’s just about empty, you buy more rice. Cool, huh? You might check around the Asian markets and see if you can get one of these things — I love mine. You may notice the corner of a towel on top: I rest my knives on top of this thing, well out of reach of my toddler son.
Continue on to read about cooking this stuff!
Let’s start with the basic recipe: put rice and water in the rice cooker, add some stuff, and turn it on.
Complicated, huh?
No, but seriously, let’s talk about this.
Rice: Home Style and High Style
Takikomi gohan is one of those foods that spans the range from home cooking to the highest-end kaiseki ryōri (Japanese ultra-haute cuisine). Actually, you don’t see it all that often in restaurants in between. But the reason you see it in kaiseki is because that cuisine is all about home cooking, memories of tastes in conjunction with the seasons, and all that. You would not believe just how complicated kaiseki is, because it’s so damn simple. Here on the left is tossed takikomi gohan with uni (sea urchin) at Roan Kikunoi, a spectacular and very subtly “new-style” kaiseki place.
Now you might not think, based on the recipe above (which is accurate, by the way), that you could really do high style with this, and you might think every home style version would be more or less the same. So to explain, I’ve got to talk a bit in the abstract, about what this dish means.
Rice in Japan and China (and probably elsewhere in Asia, but I only know much about the food cultures of Japan and China) is treated with a complicated sort of reverence. One of the big points is about the flavor of rice. We tend to think of rice as a background, something that doesn’t taste like a whole lot by itself, but in Japan and China it’s thought to have its own distinctive and wonderful flavor. You might compare this to the Italian perspective on pasta: they think our habit of dumping huge amounts of sauce on pasta is disgusting and backwards, because it masks the flavor of the pasta. We think of pasta as a vehicle, usually, and they think of it the other way around.
The flavor of rice, considered inimitable, is of course extremely subtle. It does get quite a bit stronger when it gets a little brown at the edges, which usually happens if you overcook it. The interesting thing, though, is that this browning also happens if you use an old-fashioned cast-iron pot (called a kaman) to cook it: the pot tends to get very hot and a little of the rice that sits against the bottom is bound to get a hair scorched and crunchy. This part of the rice is thought of with a good bit of nostalgia: it’s really the way grandma used to make it, you see, back before there were electric rice cookers in every home. The little bit of browning you may get at the bottom of an electric cooker isn’t the same — and that’s not just nostalgia, by the way, because it really doesn’t taste the same. Interestingly, I am told that Persians get like this about the brown crusty stuff on the bottom of pilauw (pilaf), which goes to show, I guess.
Another way to draw out the subtleties of rice is to cook it with other things that will complement it. In Japanese thinking, you want things that are fragrant, aromatic, but not sharp or spicy. A green flavor, as of fresh peas; an earthy-woodsy flavor, as of fragrant mushrooms — these are the sorts of things you want. Things that will stay themselves, will perfume the rice, but will not overpower.
The crucial thing, though, is the rice itself. You can pay much, much more than many of you would believe for rice here. They get quite nuts about it. What’s more, you can’t store it very long, especially in hot weather. If you ever wondered why there are so damn many 5-pound packages of Japanese rice, i.e. if like me you ever wondered why the Japanese do this when they could buy 50-pound bags at the rate they use the stuff, you now have your answer: they think it needs to be eaten with a few weeks of opening the bag, that’s why. They want “new crop” rice, fresh as possible. And, to be honest, it does make a difference — I just don’t think it’s such a big difference that I personally am going to make a fuss about it. But they do.
For Japanese rice, perhaps the most popular style is koshihikari. This isn’t a brand: it’s a breed. Since this is now being grown quite well in California, it should be readily available. Ideally, you want the freshest rice possible, which is easy: just look at the packing date. It’s not necessary to buy super-expensive rice unless you already know what you’re looking for and have a very subtle taste for it, in which case you don’t need my advice.
Dealing With Rice
A decent rice cooker is a wonderful thing. Inside the cooker, there is a little pot, usually nonstick, with lines impressed along the side and marked with numbers. You put in X cups of well-rinsed rice, then add water up to the X line. Close the cooker and turn it on, and in 20 minutes to an hour, depending on the cooker, you have perfect steamed rice. Many of them have other options: you can make sushi rice in them, or congee (rice gruel), or brown rice, etc. All of these require slightly different settings and different amounts of water, but it’s very simple. Just be careful to save any little measuring thing that comes with the cooker: Japanese cups are not the same as US or metric cups. You can also do what I did with my cooker at home: write the number of cc in a Japanese cup on the lid, with a permanent marker.
For reference: 1 Japanese cup = 200 ml
As to brands, I recommend Japanese. I like Zōjirushi a lot. I tend to be a bit skeptical of Chinese brands. That may be unfair, but many such appliances have a habit of breaking.
Then there’s this handy-dandy little cheapo thing I got here for ten bucks: it’s a combination rice-storer-and-measurer. You pour rice in the top. When the button is up, it measures precisely one Japanese cup of rice into a little slot in the bottom. When you push it down, this much rice dumps in the tray. Then you push it up again. You put however many cups into the tray in the bottom, push the button up one last time, and pull out the tray. Then you dump the contents in the cooker, add water up to the appropriate measuring line (also marked by cups of rice), and turn on the cooker. What’s more, the rice stays free of dust, bugs, and everything else. When it’s just about empty, you buy more rice. Cool, huh? You might check around the Asian markets and see if you can get one of these things — I love mine. You may notice the corner of a towel on top: I rest my knives on top of this thing, well out of reach of my toddler son.
Continue on to read about cooking this stuff!
Comments (4) · Want to Comment? Log In!
mct · I love how that rice cooker looks like a person.
Chris Lehrer · Or perhaps Jumba, the mad scientist in Lilo and Stitch!
mct · I can see it!
lizhenry · I get like that about the brown rice at the bottom of the bibimbap hot pot... YUM
