Frozen rice

[Fat Guy]

I've noticed at Trader Joe's and also at normal grocery stores that the market is now rich with frozen brown rice. You just put it in the microwave and a few minutes later you have rice.

It does taste pretty good, at least the TJ's product. I haven't analyzed cost but the news can't possibly be good on that front.

Anybody have opinions on frozen rice?

[LindaK]

If I have leftover rice that I can't use soon, I freeze it. It thaws and reheats in no time and can be really convenient to have on hand. It's usually a bit on the dry side but I'm usually using it as the base for something with sauce anyway.

I've seen the frozen rice at TJ's but never thought to buy it. The cost seemed awfully high for just rice.

[Will]

We freeze leftover rice. Our method is to wrap it in plastic wrap in "hamsters" (which can be later microwaved).

The only reason to put rice in the fridge instead is if you're saving it to make fried rice with.

Edited September 3, 2011 by Will (log)

[chezcherie]

i eat brown rice when i'm trying to eat more healthfully. brown rice takes 45+ minutes to cook. do you know how many snickers bars (errrr, caramellos) i can eat in 45 minutes???

i've just finished writing my third trader joe's cookbook (not sponsored or sold at tj's) , and i know the inventory of those stores backwards, forwards and upside down. i've been told that the frozen brown rice is one of their top-selling skus, and it's difficult to keep in stock. i love the stuff. the box is too large to fit well in my freezer, but i just recycle the outer box and stash the three bags hither and yon in the freezer. there is a relatively new frozen brown rice, red rice and black barley combo that i really like, too.

(edited to modify candybar example)

Edited September 3, 2011 by chezcherie (log)

[DickL]

I've started cooking large batches (enough for maybe ten servings) of rice (basmati, jasmine, and brown) and freezing most of it in one- or two-serving containers. Then when I'm feeling lazy, I can just thaw some. My wife doesn't much like brown rice, so having it frozen means I can have it more frequently when I want it. Freezers are wonderful things.

[Lisa Shock]

Agreed, rice freezes remarkably well. I always make extras when I make brown rice and freeze it in several sizes of containers for various applications.

[ScoopKW]

We freeze leftover rice. Our method is to wrap it in plastic wrap in "hamsters" (which can be later microwaved).

Oooooh, cuy and rice. That sounds delish.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Scoop, you should know that cuy is normally served with peanut-sauce potatoes, not rice....

[Broken English]

I've never enjoyed brown rice for some reason, something about the flavor does nothing for me. I can imagine this would be convenient if you were cooking for one, but expensive and pointless otherwise.

[Will]

i eat brown rice when i'm trying to eat more healthfully. brown rice takes 45+ minutes to cook. do you know how many snickers bars (errrr, caramellos) i can eat in 45 minutes???

For me, a rice cooker with a timer and a brown rice mode was a game changer here... put the rice on in the morning (or even the night before, if you're not worried about cooties growing), and set the timer... then the rice is done at the time you set it for. Also great for having steel cut oats ready in the morning.

[Will]

I've never enjoyed brown rice for some reason, something about the flavor does nothing for me. I can imagine this would be convenient if you were cooking for one, but expensive and pointless otherwise.

It's worth trying different types, for example, I don't love most long grain brown rice, but love most short-grain Japanese style brown rice. I really enjoy the slightly nutty taste, and with simple or bland food, I think it is nice to have that slightly stronger flavor. Mixing in black / purple rice, or other grains (Korean and Japanese markets sell some grain mixes which you can add to rice), can also sometimes make brown rice taste better. Also depends what you're eating it with.

The "haiga" type is interesting - it's been milled to remove the bran, but leave the germ. You don't get much of the fiber benefit of brown rice, but you do get most of the extra nutrients. Even with a lot of rinsing, it's maybe a bit stickier than standard white rice, but it tastes pretty much identical.

[Broken English]

Yeah I think it's that bran taste that turns me off brown rice. I'll definately try it out for size.

[HungryChris]

I have been buying the TJ's frozen fried rice for a while now. I think my favorite is the vegetable. It is a fast and tasty foil for many leftovers. As far as just buying frozen rice, I think I can wait for the real thing.

HC

[mgaretz]

I used to buy the TJs frozen rice until we bought a rice cooker. But the rice cooker's smallest batch usually makes 3 times as much rice as we need for a given meal, so I freeze the leftovers in two portions. I vacuum seal it and the reheat just like the TJs by cutting a small bit off one corner and microwaving for three minutes followed with a one minute rest.

[Jenni]

Each to their own but I will admit that I laughed at this thread a bit, due to the thought of paying extra to buy cooked rice. Of course, it's a time saver that some find useful and I'm only chuckling good naturedly. But where I am it is common to sort of do the exact opposite - if you and your friends feel like getting food delivered one evening, you order dal, sabzis, paneer, meat, "Chinese", rotis, etc. but cook plain rice at home!

[chezcherie]

i agree that it's rarely worth the increased expense for white rice, which is pretty quick cooking. but the brown rice? that's a whole different kettle of grains, in my household! plus, for some reason, cooking brown rice, besides the extended cooking time, is my personal culinary achilles' heel. i'm sure a rice cooker would solve that issue, but i've got no available real estate for that! anyone else have good white rice cooking juju, but bad brown rice skills?

[Jenni]

^^

The only brown rice I have ever eaten was brown basmati and it cooked in barely 5 minutes more time than regular basmati. Of course, would depend on the type of rice and how you cooked it. Speaking from a strictly personal point of view, parboiled rice also takes a long time to cook and I cook that often so the time taken by longer cooking varities of brown rice probably wouldn't phase me. By the time you have cooked other stuff to go with the meal, set the table, etc, the rice is done

[Chris Hennes]

Setting aside issues of cost, how is the quality of the rice? Basically as good as made fresh at home, or does it suffer for the freezing? Or is it better because they can use fresher rice or something?

[mgaretz]

Setting aside issues of cost, how is the quality of the rice? Basically as good as made fresh at home, or does it suffer for the freezing? Or is it better because they can use fresher rice or something?

The quality is very good. I can't tell it from what I make in the rice cooker. The frozen then reheated rice I do myself doesn't suffer perceptably from fresh from the rice cooker.

OTOH, I have had plenty of other folks' homemade (and even restaurant) rice that is overcooked, starchy, dried out and host of other issues - the TJs is far, far better than that!

[KarenDW]

I like to have cooked rice in the fridge, at all times. In fact, when my children lived with me, they often complained that there "wasn't anything to eat" in the fridge if there was no rice!

Freezing cooked rice is nothing new in our household. I do like to have one or two packets on hand, for small/quick meals. But I am also probably unlikely to purchase pre-cooked rice.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Even if it is excellent, the idea of buying packaged, precooked, frozen, shipped rice strikes me as ridiculous, like buying precooked oatmeal or frozen omelets.

[Chris Hennes]

Nah, if you can reduce the time-to-table from 45 minutes to 2 minutes for brown rice I think it's probably worth it. I could never consider serving brown rice with a stir-fry, I'd have to start it too early. But if it's just a matter of reheating, I could pop it in the microwave right before I fired up the wok.

[Lisa Shock]

Nah, if you can reduce the time-to-table from 45 minutes to 2 minutes for brown rice I think it's probably worth it. I could never consider serving brown rice with a stir-fry, I'd have to start it too early. But if it's just a matter of reheating, I could pop it in the microwave right before I fired up the wok.

True, but, you could make the frozen rice yourself much more cheaply, even including the price of storage containers. If you just make 6x too much rice once every month or so, pack it and freeze it, you're set.

You could also make double the amount of rice one night for, say, Indian food and refrigerate the excess and use it the next day or day after for fried rice.

[Fat Guy]

I'd be interested in a cost-per-serving comparison. That would better allow someone to judge whether the increased per-serving price is worth the speed advantage.

I'd also be interested in a side-by-side tasting. I've had the TJ's brown rice a couple of times but my impressions have not been formed in the presence of a control sample. Preliminarily, just going from admittedly unreliable taste memory, I think the TJ's frozen brown rice is better-tasting (with, of course, more reliably standardized texture and moisture content) than generic mass-market dry brown rice (e.g., Carolina brand), and more in the category of properly prepared premium dry brown rice (e.g., Lundberg or RiceSelect). I'm not sure I eat enough of any of these products to have a firm opinion, though.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I'd be interested in a cost-per-serving comparison. That would better allow someone to judge whether the increased per-serving price is worth the speed advantage.

Our everyday rice lately has been Nishiki Premium Medium Brown Rice, which is around $1.80-2.10/lb, depending on where and how you buy it, which is one of the more expensive brands at the Asian market where I usually get it. Lundberg organic will be around 50% more.

Hunting around on the web, the most recent quote I could get about TJ Frozen Organic Brown Rice was $3.99 for six cups cooked, but that was a couple of years old.

So six cups cooked should be around 1.5 cups dry, depending on the rice, which would make my Nishiki Medium Brown around $1.40 for the same amount as a box of TJ Frozen.

As for cooking time, if I'm planning to make rice and I'm the first one home, the first thing I do when I walk in the house is to put it in the rice cooker and get it going. That usually leaves plenty of time to get settled and start making dinner.