Fresh Rice vs. Aged Rice

[Peter the eater]

I love rice as much as the next several billion people, but as a regular Canadian who's interested in food I feel I may be missing out on some of secrets of the world's most consumed grain.

I've got maybe a dozen types in drawers and jars around the kitchen (plus some wild rice from Saskatchewan!) and I enjoy them all. I believe I've done due diligence poking through the many rice topics here but I'm still unclear how fresh rice tastes compared to aged rice. The closest I found was Ben Hong's words:

Speaking of which, you have not tasted good rice until you've eaten rice that's fresh milled one day after harvest.

from this thread, plus a few mentions of pinipig, but that's it.

I know how a root tuber like a small Superior potato is brilliant when boiled within hours of harvest and why a Russet Burbank can live in my basement for months and still be ten out of ten when baked in March. Just an analogy, but how does it work with rice?

[prasantrin]

New rice seems to absorb water better and cook up softer than old rice.

[Peter the eater]

New rice seems to absorb water better and cook up softer than old rice.

So new rice is moist and soft in the mouth, that makes sense.

Are there flavour changes as well? The label on my big bag of basmati makes it very clear that it's aged.

[nakji]

When I lived in Vietnam, where rice is harvested three times a year in some places, I noticed a difference in the taste of rice - it had a stronger taste and fragrance, to my mind, like the difference between coffee you've been keeping in your freezer, and coffee that you've freshly ground from fresh roasted beans.

In Korea, a lot is made of eating fresh rice at Korean Thanksgiving (Chuseok), since that's the time when the crop is harvest. I noticed, as Prasantrin has mentioned, that it seems to cling together more, and yield softly in your mouth.

As for basmati, I'm not sure, but I've seen it labeled as "aged" before, too. I don't know what the difference is there.

[prasantrin]

I'm not sure, but I think the general preference is for basmati to be dry (the grains should be separate and not have too much moisture), so it would make sense that older basmati would be desirable. I'm just basing this on my observation that it seems to be much drier than jasmine rice (my usual rice) which is why I don't really like basmati.

[Adam Balic]

Basmati and related rices are often labelled "aged" as this is an indication of certain desirable characteristics. Aged Basmati has a lower water content and a specific fragrance (smells a bit musty/mousy in the un-cooked state, but gives a characteristic fragrant nutty flavour on cooking). Also aged rice produces a drier, non-sticky rice, so in regions that like dry rice they tend to age it and vise versa.

From memory I thought that the as the rice is aged with the bran intact, fatty acids in the bran break down and generate aromatic molecules, however Harold McGee discusses aging rice here, where he indicates that one of the characteristic flavor molecules of jasmine and basmati rice actually decrease on storage.

I would imagine that there are more then one group of aroma molecules, after all Jasmine and Basmati taste quite different and maybe there is an increase in some of these on aging, but given the data given by McGee, the major effect of aging in on texture.

Edited July 30, 2008 by Adam Balic (log)

[cmsoulbrother]

Basmati and related rices are often labelled "aged" as this is an indication of certain desirable characteristics. Aged Basmati has a lower water content and a specific fragrance (smells a bit musty/mousy in the un-cooked state, but gives a characteristic fragrant nutty flavour on cooking). Also aged rice produces a drier, non-sticky rice, so in regions that like dry rice they tend to age it and vise versa.

From memory I thought that the as the rice is aged with the bran intact, fatty acids in the bran break down and generate aromatic molecules, however Harold McGee discusses aging rice here, where he indicates that one of the characteristic flavor molecules of jasmine and basmati rice actually decrease on storage.

I would imagine that there are more then one group of aroma molecules, after all Jasmine and Basmati taste quite different and maybe there is an increase in some of these on aging, but given the data given by McGee, the major effect of aging in on texture.

←

[cmsoulbrother]

My wife's family tends a small rice paddy in Thailand and we are sometimes the lucky recipient of a very freshly harvested sack of Jasmine rice - and it is the cat's meow. Both softer and far far more flavorful. Great stuff.

[Peter the eater]

I found some rice at The Bulk Barn called Emperor's Green Rice. Being a bulk food store there wasn't much info about the product, only how to cook it, and the adjective "young" was used:

So now I'm reading a library book called "The Essential Rice Cookbook" (Whitecap Books Vancouver 2003, ISBN 1-55285-495-7) and there's no mention of green rice or Emperors. The books says on page 8 that "Rice is eaten daily by over 300 billion people." How the hell does that work? They must have meant 3 billion. There are some good recipes and images, though.

The rice pictured above was cooked in slightly salted water for 25 minutes and came out beautifully -- toothsome and flavourful.

Anbody have experience with or information about Emperor's Green Rice?

[TheFuzzy]

Anbody have experience with or information about Emperor's Green Rice?

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Nope. I got some Green Bamboo Rice from a booth at Cleveland's old market recently, but that's actually green in color.

[RobertCollins]

As did The Fuzzy, I bought some bamboo rice just Thursday. The sign in the market said that it was white rice [short grained] that had been soaked in bamboo leafs added to water.

I haven't yet tried it.

[mudbug]

"Aged Basmati -or- aged zhanmi (两年粘米). So right, just in case you happen to be in China or something, the specific variety of rice used is aged zhanmi from Zengcheng, which’s right outside of Guangzhou. Zhanmi has it’s own fascinating history (it’s derived from Champa rice)"

 

Recipe: Cheung Fun, Rice Noodle Rolls from scratch using rice (布拉肠粉)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/albz9s/recipe_cheung_fun_rice_noodle_rolls_from_scratch/

Edited October 15, 2019 by mudbug (log)

[mudbug]

Ageing of rice: A review
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcs.2018.04.009

 

1. Introduction
2. Advantages of rice ageing
3. Types of ageing of rice
4. Different methods of artificial ageing
5. Changes in chemical properties of rice during ageing
6. Effect of ageing on rice properties
7. Ageing induced proteomic and genetic changes in rice seed
8. Monitoring of ageing process of rice
9. Limitations of rice ageing
10. Conclusion
References

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0733521018301942

[Margaret Pilgrim]

On 10/14/2019 at 10:57 PM, mudbug said:

"Aged Basmati -or- aged zhanmi (两年粘米). So right, just in case you happen to be in China or something, the specific variety of rice used is aged zhanmi from Zengcheng, which’s right outside of Guangzhou. Zhanmi has it’s own fascinating history (it’s derived from Champa rice)"

 

Recipe: Cheung Fun, Rice Noodle Rolls from scratch using rice (布拉肠粉)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Cooking/comments/albz9s/recipe_cheung_fun_rice_noodle_rolls_from_scratch/

 

This was a fabulous read!     I'm not sure I'll try it, but this instruction makes it sound almost doable.    Many thanks!

[mudbug]

On 10/17/2019 at 2:00 PM, Margaret Pilgrim said:

This was a fabulous read!     I'm not sure I'll try it, but this instruction makes it sound almost doable.    Many thanks!

 

Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you try it Margaret, do post back to let us know how it went!

[Margaret Pilgrim]

I have made rice noodle on a dinner plate in a steamer, using rice flour.    That's about a far as I'm going.    Again, certainly doable, but to get usable quantity you need to repeat the process several times.    Mai Wah supermarket is a 10 minute walk from my house and their rice noodle is usually still warm when you buy it.    Works for me....