Rice Questions

[chrissy]

what can you tell me about different types of rice. i didn't realize there were so many different kinds. is there any particular rice that will work better for me to grind into flour?

christine

[tarnalberry]

what can you tell me about different types of rice. i didn't realize there were so many different kinds. is there any particular rice that will work better for me to grind into flour?

christine

ooo boy! replying to this post will take me through the 25 minutes left on my chicken-rice soup.

well, we've got white rice, and brown rice, and wild rice (which isn't really a rice), not to mention the specialty rices like red rice and black rice.

starting in the white rice area, we've got a number of options (and this isn't all of them):

long grain

basmatic

jasmine

medium grain

short grain

sushi

arborio (risotto)

The long grain rices are less starchy than the shorter grain ones. Sushi rice is a bit stickier than short grain, and arborio is the starchiest - as such it is used to make risotto, because it generates a creamy sauce when constantly stirred.

as far as brown rice goes, there's also long, medium, and short grain - again, the shorter grain being a bit starchier.

wild rice isn't actually rice, and has a fairly strong flavor.

there's also red, and black rice - which are more expensive variations and have unique tastes.

as for grinding your own flour, I think different rices would serve different purposes. now that you mention it, I'm quite curious how arborio rice would go. sweet rice flour, which comes from sweet rice (a variety of short grain white rice), has good properties of making things creamy (for a flour!), and I suspect arborio would have similar properties, perhaps more so. brown rice would add more protein and fiber and fat, but possibly a gritter texture. I don't know how well wild rice or the specialty rices would work as a flour, but it's probably worth a shot, and man would you get some funny colored baked goods! :-)