Power to the Pilaf Transcript
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Power to the Pilaf Transcript
SCENE 118,000 Feet - 3:07 pm
[no title graphic presented for this episode]
Each day, about two-thirds of the people on this planet fuel
up on rice. And why not? It's nutritious, versatile, delicious,
economical. It's even hypoallergenic. Yet still, there are a lot
of Americans who don't know pilaf from paella any more
than they can tell the difference between texmati and arborio.
In short, rice is still just a little bit mysterious. And since we
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are doggedly determined to
decipher all culinary conundrums,
we have no choice but to fling
ourselves in this tiny, vulnerable, woefully underpowered aircraft into
the heart of Cajun country. That's right. We're going to find our
answers at the International Rice Festival in Crowley, Louisiana. Oh,
and by the way, this is definitely Good Eats.
SCENE 2Crowley, LA - 4:15 pm
Half an hour west of La Fayette sits Crowley, Louisiana,
rice capitol of the world. Once we obtained lodging it was
time to crack the rice mystery. RICE
WELCOME TO THE
INTERNATIONAL
RICE FESTIVAL
Rice HOTEL
Air Conditioned · Phones
TV's · Free Parking
Reasonable Rates
SCENE 3Hoppe Farms - 5:39 pm
GUEST: Old Lady
So, we started at ground zero. We're not sure when rice
was first cultivated, but we're pretty sure that it happened
around the Kohrat region of Northern Thailand about 5,000
BC. We know that the Chinese were cultivating rice by 28
hundred BC because we've gotten written records of it. But
by the 4th century BC, the Indians were actually shippingrice to Greece. From there it was just a hop, skip and a
jump to Persia, over the Nile River Delta into Africa where
rice just loved the savannah wetlands and rice went really
well with the gumbos there.
Now, American colonists wouldn't taste rice until about 1625, when luck would have it, a storm-
beaten galleon bound for Madagascar limped into Charleston Harbor. Now, a local planter lent
assistance and was rewarded by the captain with a small bag of golden seeds. Now, odds are he
would have rather have had the gold, but things worked out pretty well for him.
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See, the Carolina lowlands were the perfect place to grow rice. But the mud was so soft, the
machinery, even oxen, just sank into it. So, it had to be worked by hand, hence slavery. It was rice,
not cotton, that began the plantation era in the South. Not only could the African slaves do the
work, they had the knowledge of the rice from their homeland. By the early 18 hundreds,
Charleston was shipping out some 50,000 tons of Carolina Gold Rice per year and it was
considered to be some of the finest rice in the world.
Well, the end of the Civil War brought the end of slavery
and it ended the rice cultivation in the Carolinas. But by then,somebody had already figured out that the low river areas
around Louisiana, east Texas and Arkansas, not only could
support rice, but the heavy machinery needed to cultivate it
in modern times. So today, most of America's rice is
cultivated in states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri,
Texas, Louisiana and California.
The folks at the mill
gave me the grand tour: showed me how the husk is removed to
make brown rice and how the bran is removed to make white
rice. Even showed me the laser that sorts out the broken bits.Then I went over and checked out the rice cooking competition,
the rice eating competition and
even the rice threshing
competition. But I still hadn't
found what I was looking for. Why is rice light-and-fluffy one day
and a solid block of goo the next? Finally, a long time rice cooker
broke the silence. A rice cooker? Imagine my surprise.
The self-appointed rice capitol of America, Crowley has been throwing this little October Harvest party for, I don't know, 60 years? During the day time, it's all rice: growing rice, threshing
rice, cooking rice and a lot of eating rice. But come ...
SCENE 4The Kitchen
... night time, it's just a big party.
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Complicated machinery and secret methodologies aside, there's just no substitute for knowing
your ingredients.
There are literally thousands of varieties of rice. From the
foothills of the Himalaya come the long, lightly perfumed
basmati grains. Tar Baby-like sticky rices from the paddies
of Japan, the amazing self-saucing arborio rices from
Northern Italy, Thailand's jasmine offers its heady perfume at
a fraction of basmati's price. Now appearing in a paella near
you, Spain's Valencia. We have wehani, texmati, della, blue,
red, black japonica, wild rice which isn't really rice to begin
with—it's an aquatic grass—and even white rice. When it
comes to rice cooking there're only two questions you got to
ask: first, what's the grain length and second, how is it
processed?
IN HUSK, OUT OF HUSK,
POLISHED
PRECOOKED, PARBOILED
BLACK JAPONICA, WEHANI
SHORT GRAIN, MEDIUM
GRAIN, LONG GRAIN
ARBORIO, POPCORN
BASMATI, VALENCIA
SUSHI, DELLA, BROWN,
SWEET
WILD
GOOD OL' AMERICAN LONG
GRAIN WHITE RICE
Each of the 10,000 plus different varieties of rice fallwithin three commercial classifications: long grain, medium
grain and, you guessed it, short grain.
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Short: Sticky, 4-5 mm
Medium: Fluffy then Sticky,
5-6 mm
Long: Fluffy, 6 mm +
Short grain rices are grown mostly in Asia and California,
and when cooked, these stubby little guys are sticky enough
to be formed into Sushi or picked up easily with chopsticks.
In a strange, double, malapropian twist, short grain rices are
often called sweet or glutinous rices despite the fact that they
don't taste sweet at all and they contain no gluten
whatsoever.
Short Grain
Sticky When Cooked
Sweet
Glutinous
The starch coat on medium grain rices like Italy's famed
arborio can be coaxed right off of the grain producing the
characteristic creaminess of risotto and rice pudding. Now
although fluffy when first cooked, medium grain rices get
sticky as they cool down. But since their starch doesn't
crystallize, they're a good choice for salads and cold dishes.
Medium Grain
Release Starch Into Liquid
Stick As They Cool
Good For Salads
At four to six times longer than they are wide, long grain
rices don't release starch into their surroundings the way
medium or short grain rices do. So, what do you get?Beautiful, fluffy, individual, relatively dry grains. In other
words, American rice.
Long Grain
Don't Surrender Starch
Fluffy
Seperate [sic]
Now, long grain rices are great all-purpose rices, except when it comes to cold dishes. See, the
starch in these grains crystallizes when cooked and cooled which results in rock hard little grains.
When reheated, though, the crystals do dissolve again. So what is bad for, say, salad is good for
fried rice.
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Due to their popcorn-like fragrance, long grain rices like
basmati and jasmine are called "aromatic" rices.
Once it's threshed off the ear, each grain is still encased in
a husk. Remove the husk and, voilà, brown rice. See, like
most grains, the inner part of the kernel, or endosperm, is
surrounded by a thin layer of bran which is where most of
the nutrients are. Since its a tough little cuss, brown riceneeds about 3 times as much water and time to cook as the
same amount of white rice. The hassle is worth it, though,
because brown rice has a great nutty flavor and a stronger
nutritional punch than its buffed up brother. It can be sold as
is or the bran can be rubbed off to reveal the pearly white
underneath.IN HUSK
OUT OF HUSK
Brown Rice
Bran
3 x H2O/Time
Polished
White and converted rice will keep for years on the shelf as long as you keep them in air tight
containers with lids. I like these kind of big-mouth jobbies, easy scooping. Now, brown rice on the
other hand is a completely different matter because, remember, it's still got the bran on it and the
bran means oil and oil will go rancid in just 6 months on the shelf. The answer is the freezer. In hereyou can keep it for one to two years. But, since fats oxidize and pick up off flavors, the thing to do
is to keep it inside a zip-lock bag and then keep that inside another sealed container. Spoilage foiled
again.
Rice bran oil is nearly flavorless & has a very high smoke point.
SCENE 5The Kitchen
Oh. Dang. [rice cooked badly]
[Dog dish]
Spot
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SCENE 6Store
GUEST: "W", Equipment Specialist
Customer
Robot
Before settling on a cooking method, I thought I'd better check out the rice cooker scene with my
equipment specialist, W.
W: I thought you weren't going to come around so often.
AB: Hello, W. I need everything you've got on rice
cookers.
W: Come on.
The ever helpful W strutted her wares. The cookers
ranged from simple heated pots or buckets, ...
SCENE 7Living Room
... even, to a fuzzy logic model that not only cooked rice to perfection but scared the heck out of the
dogs while delivering it. Mysteriously, all these machines
seemed to grasp some piece of knowledge that had
alluded me.
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ROBOT: [rolls up to AB with a pot of rice]
AB: [samples, nods approvingly, shoos him away]
ROBOT: Thank you ???, Master.
SCENE 8Store
W: Rice cookers work so well because they know
something that you can't.
AB: The Colonel's secret 11 herbs and spices.
W: No. The temperature inside the pot.
AB: Yeah?
W: When all the water's been absorbed by the rice the
temperature begins to increase. Sensors then pick up on
the change, tell the machine to let the rice rest and keep
it warm until service.
AB: Wow. Sensors. I'll take it.W: Uh, not this one. We're going to keep it simple for you.
AB: Eh.
SCENE 7The Kitchen
We gave a few of the models a spin and several did an excellent job, especially with brown rice
—traditionally tricky because of its longer cooking time. Many models doubled as steamers, too.
We even made some pretty decent jambalayas. So, if you cook rice a lot, don't mind spending 50to 100 bucks or more, and have counter or cabinet space to spare you have our blessing. Now, the
microwave cooker we tested didn't save any time but it performed consistently and freed up
valuable stove and oven space.
The problem is, you can't make risotto in a rice cooker. And
what's worse, you can't make pilaf. It seems the word 'pilaf' is
from the Persian, pilaw, means rice dish. Well, there's a little
more to it than that. A pilaf always starts with long grain rice, and
it's always sautéed in a bit of fat, usually butter, before any liquid
is added to the pan.
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got a tight fitting lid. Now, when the butter melts add your onion and your bell pepper along with a
couple of pinches of kosher salt. Stir to coat then turn down the heat. We want this to sweat, not to
brown or sauté. You want to cook it slowly until the aromatics become soft and fragrant.
Now, these ingredients do not a pilaf make. Pilaf is a method. Even if nothing ended up in this
pan but rice, a little fat and water it will still be a pilaf.
Now, the second secret to happy rice is finding the right ratio of rice to liquid. The instructions on
your average bag of rice always says the same thing, "1 cup rice, 2 cups water." If that were right,
and I don't think it is, one could deduce that a 2 to 1 water/rice ratio would always be the way to gono matter how much rice was involved. Well, it isn't that way. Not only are 2 cups of water more
than any respectable cup of long grain rice needs, but the proportion of water to rice actually goes
down the more rice you cook. Here's how we see it.
Now, for the sake of argument we will restrict our
demonstration to American long grain white rice. One cup of
rice will cook very nicely, thank you, in 1 1/2 cups of water.
It seems pretty simple, right? But, the plot thickens.
1 1/2 Cups H2O
1 Cup Rice
Two cups of rice will cook perfectly in 2 3/4 cups of
water. Wait, it gets even weirder.
2 3/4 Cups H2O
2 Cups Rice
Three cups of rice can be cooked to perfection in 3 1/2
cups of water.
3 1/2 Cups H2O
3 Cups Rice
Which obviously makes it seem apparent that the more rice you cook the less water you need.
Now, if you have a slide rule and you know how to use it you could probably figure out some handy
formula or at the very least come up with a good comedy routine. "Hey, Abbot. When are we going
to have more rice than watuh?"
In Japan, rice fields are often named like people.
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SCENE 8The Kitchen
Our veggies are soft and fragrant, so it's time to add the
rice. I'm going with two cups of American long grain
polished rice, not converted.
2 Cups Long Grain
Pressure steamed prior to milling, converted or par-boiled rice retains
many of the bran's nutrients, which explains its golden color.
I'm going to stir to coat and turn up the heat. I want the
butter to get hot enough to kind of caramelize some of the
sugars that are on the outside starch of the rice kernel.
That's going to give the pilaf its characteristic nutty flavor.
How long to cook? Well, until you smell nuts. Every good
cook I know is constantly tasting and smelling things. Why
trust your nose? It grew where it is specifically to help youfind stuff to eat. So take a lesson from your dog and listen to
your nose.
[sniff, sniff ... sniff] I smell nuts. Sure thing. Three and a half minutes. And our rice has taken
on a beautiful gold color and definitely a nutty aroma.
So, we're ready to add the rest of the ingredients. We're
going to start with the liquid. We've got a total of 2 and 3/4
cups because we've got 2 cups of rice. Now, a quarter cup
of that has been used to steep the saffron and you can tell
that it's already let go of a lot of its gorgeous color. It's going
to perfume and color the whole batch. So, in it goes along
with the rest of the stock. I want to wash out the saffron
bowl to get all that color out. Great. Give it a stir.
2 3/4 Cup Liquid
I'm going to toss in a bay leaf, ah, what the heck, two bay leaves and about a 1 inch wide strip of
orange zest. Now the most important ingredient, salt. Rice, like any starch has got to be cooked
with salt or it won't matter how much you add later, it
will never taste right. Now, I like to get this up to
about, I don't know, seawater flavor so I'm going toadd a teaspoon and a half of salt, give it a stir and then
taste it ... not with the fingers I had in the salt. Good.
Bring the heat up to high, stir it once and then throw
away the spoon. Never again will a spoon t... No,
never again will a spoon touch this rice. Let it come to a
boil.
I love that time
folding trick.
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We have a boil so it's time to talk about lids. We need a tight
cover that won't let steam sneak out of the pan. Here's a cool
trick. Say you've got a boil, which we do, turn off the heat and
then spread a barely moist dish towel over the pan. Then cover
and fold up the edges. This is also going to keep condensation
from dripping off the lid back into the pan. Okay, in the oven.
Now, you may have to rearrange the racks to get the handle in a bit. Set your timer for 15
minutes and walk away. You know, I feel good about the 15 minutes because I know my oven is ata cozy 350º. How do I know? Because I've got a thermometer in there to tell me so. Now, rice bag
instructions have to be a little bit vague for cooking times because they can't be sure about your
range heat anymore than they can microwave wattage. So, they have to average a guess.
SCENE 9Baseball Field
The fall flowering crocus is ground zero for saffron. Each tiny flower contains three little
threadlike stigma which have to be picked by hand. Now, if you picked this patch and about43,000 more just like it—it's about 5 of these infields worth
—you'd have a pound of saffron with a market value of
about a $1,000 making saffron the most expensive food on
earth.
Now, Kashmir saffron is the best. It's easily recognized
by its solid red threads. Now, Spanish and Turkish saffron
like this can contain up to 10% yellow stamens so they're a
wee bit less intense. Personally, I don't notice the difference
in flavor as much as the difference in price which can be
substantial. Now, luckily a little goes a long way. We only used about a quarter's worth for our
pilaf.
Now, we suggest you buy saffron from a specialty spice catalogue, not from a store where it may
have been laying around losing its punch. And never settle for crushed
or powdered saffron. It's almost always been cut with turmeric. Now,
keep your saffron in a heavy plastic bag or a jar with an air tight lid.
The safe, is optional.
[beep, beep] What's that? Fifteen minutes already?
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SCENE 10The Kitchen
Fight with all your might the urge to open that lid for
at least 10 minutes. Fifteen would be better. Twenty
would be okay. See, there's still a lot of heat in there.
That rice is still cooking. You open that lid now, whew,
well, that rice will miss its one shot at being all it can be.And believe me, a grain is a terrible thing to waste. And
don't worry. If something did go wrong in there, odds
are we can fix it.
Okay, break time is over. You can look at your rice if
you're ready with a bowl or a serving platter to turn it out
into. Ah, looks great.
15 Minutes Later
But, danger lurks just below the surface. See, the starch is a little unstable. Stirring could turn the
whole thing into a gummy mess. So, turn it out onto a large platter. Just let the grains fall where they
want to go. Now, you may fluff the rice.
Use a large serving fork or a pasta fork and go ahead and take out the zest and the bay leaf.
They have given their all. And now it's time to go with the peas. The rice is plenty hot enough to
warm it through. If you want to get fancy, consider, maybe, golden raisins or, my favorite, chopped
pistachios. That is a fine looking pilaf.
Now, rice is, it's not manufactured. It's a natural product and every grain is different. Every crop
is different. And because of that, you can't very well expect every pot of rice to be the same. What
I'm getting to is that even if you do everything right, occasionally there's going to be an accident. Butmost of them are fixable.
For instance: if you cook your rice and it's done but a little watery, just drain it in a colander, put
it back on a sheet pan or jelly roll pan, put it in the oven for about 5 minutes. It will dry up. If it's a
little on the underdone side just drop, say, a cup, well, half a cup even of hot water in the pan, slap
on the lid and wait five minutes. The steam will cook it the rest of the way. If on the other hand your
rice is gooey and gummy and mushy, well, consider finding yourself a good rice pudding recipe. Or
do what I do, feed it to the dog.
In China, quitting a job is referred to as "breaking the rice bowl".
SCENE 11Church Front
Considering its history, versatility, cultural significance and the fact that it's cultivated on every
continent on earth except for one, you might say that we've just barely cracked the book on rice.
But we hope that you know more than you did half an hour ago.
Just remember: short is sticky, long is fluffy, white cooks
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quicker than brown. Now brown smokes "converted,"
nutritionally speaking, but converted does edge out white
just by a hair.
Short is sticky
Long is fluffy
White cooks quicker
than brown
Brown smokes converted
nutritionally
Converted edges out
white barely
And consider this fun fact: of all the rice cultures on earth every one of them considers rice to be
a symbol of fertility, which is why we've been throwing this [rice] at weddings for the last few
millennium and not corn cobs, small watermelons, or live fish. See you next time on Good Eats.
Visit us on the web at www.foodtv.com.
Last Edited on 01/18/2010
5/26/2010 Power to the Pilaf Transcript