RICE

Rice is the go-to grain. It’s the starchy staple you can tuck into day in, day out without tiring of it. It has also made itself at home in kitchens everywhere. In a wok, pot or bowl, or on a plate, it soaks up the flavours from stocks and sauces, and partners with meat, chicken, fish, seafood, tofu, vegetables, nuts or fruit and so much more. Those early farmers who planted the first seeds some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago in southern China would be gobsmacked at the number of varieties that have evolved. It’s estimated that there are more than 100,000 kinds, ranging in colour, size, shape, aroma, stickiness and starchiness. And gobsmacked, too, at all the things we make with the grains, from flour, noodles and crackers to syrup, alcohol, oil and puffed breakfast cereals shot out of a gun.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

Nutty-tasting brown rice with just the inedible hull removed is the rice with the serious nutritional wholegrain credentials and these days we can buy 2-minute microwave options to help get meals on the table fast. Refined, popular, palatable white rice is still a good choice, especially combined with lots of veg. Look for lower-GI varieties such as basmati. For speedy meals rice noodles are good to have on hand. Check the use-by or best-before date.

HOW TO STORE IT

Store in a cool, dry place in a resealable packet or airtight container.

WHAT’S IN IT?

Half a cup (about 90 g or 3¼ oz) of cooked basmati rice has about 395 kilojoules (95 calories), 2 g protein, 0.5 g fat, 20 g carbs (0 g sugars, 20 g starches), 0.5 g fibre, 6 mg sodium, 50 mg potassium, and a moderate GI (58) and GL (12). The GI of rice can range from low (47) to very high (98) depending on variety, so it’s impossible to generalise.

WHAT ELSE?

The starch in raw food is stored in hard, compact granules our bodies find hard to digest, which is why starchy foods usually need to be cooked. Water and heat expand the starch granules during cooking to different degrees; some actually burst and free the individual starch molecules (this is gelatinisation). Rice is a great grain for getting to know the starches in our foods – amylose and amylopectin:

• Amylose is a string of glucose molecules that tend to line up in rows and form tight, compact clumps that are harder to gelatinise and digest. The lower-GI rices have a higher proportion of amylose.
• Amylopectin is a string of glucose molecules with lots of branching points, such as you see in some types of seaweed. Amylopectin molecules are larger and more open, and the starch tends to be easier to gelatinise and digest. Higher-GI rices have a higher proportion of amylopectin.

HERO RECIPES

Fish soup with Thai flavours and rice noodles (here )

Golden rice with peas and cashews (here )

Brown rice risotto with peas and prawns (here )

Wild rice pilaf with mushrooms and almonds (here )