Reheating Rice?

[tammylc]

I'm cooking common meal for my cohousing community tomorrow night. (For more on that, look here.) Anyway, tonight's cooks made too much brown rice, so there are a lot of leftovers, which I thought I'd use up tomorrow instead of making couscous for my Moroccan stew. At home, I usually just heat up leftover rice in the microwave, but there's no microwave in the common kitchen. Can anyone recommend another way to heat up 4 big bowls of brown rice?

Thanks!

[dumpling]

Throw it in a big disposal aluminum roasting pan, pour some chicken stock over it to moisten it a bit, spice as will match your Moroccan theme and bake until heated through.

[tammylc]

No chicken stock, as the meal's vegetarian, but I get the general idea...

[SobaAddict70]

Try making fried rice (should work with brown rice just as well as white):

leftover rice

garlic

minced scallions

peanut oil

light or mushroom soy

toasted sesame seeds/sprinkle of sesame oil

beaten egg (optional)

Heat oil in wok or saute pan. Stir-fry garlic, add rice. Stir fry, add soy and minced scallions towards end. Remove from heat.

Add egg to heated pan or wok. Cook until egg sets, then break up into egg shreds with chopsticks or wooden spoon. Toss with rice mixture; add toasted sesame seeds or sesame oil and serve IMMEDIATELY.

Soba

[SobaAddict70]

Alternately, you could make a rice pilaf:

Pan toast spices until fragrant, add chopped onions and clarified butter or other fatty substance, saute. Add rice, saute briefly. Add vegetable stock.

Cook until liquid is absorbed; toss with slivered almonds prior to service.

Soba

[FistFullaRoux]

When cooked rice is cooled, the starch tends to return to it's original form, especially if exposed to air. You need liquid and heat.

Try steaming it for 15 minutes or so. You need a metal colander or strainer that will keep most of the rice in, (a paper or clean kitchen towel in the colander would help with this) and a pot big enough to hold it. 1/2" of water at the bottom over medium high heat for 15 min or so, stirring occasionally, and you should be ready to go. The brown rice shouldn't really get soggy on you.

No colander? Make parcels of aluminum foil - parchment works too - that will hold the rice loosely, put something in that pot that will keep the rice packets out of the water, and poke a couple of dozen holes in the foil. Then do the heat thing for 20 minutes. I often use crumpled lengths of almuninum foil to elevate items while cooking.

Or, you could still use the microwave. You would have to work in smaller batches, but it works. Just remember to sprinkle a bit of water over ther surface, so there is something to make steam.

[Samhill]

Microwave.

[mudbug]

tammylc,

Since you won't have a microwave and having eaten rice about every day of my life, the easiest way for you to do it is just put all the rice in a pot. Use the sprayer from the sink by turning on the water to medium strength thru the faucet, press the button down on the sprayer to get it going into the sink, then shoot the rice with the sprayer about a foot away from the top of the pot for literally 1-2 seconds (making sure to cover the entire surface area and not stay on one place) and that's all you need.

Heat over medium heat and stir a couple of times.

Voila. It'll be just as good as the first time.

Edited March 16, 2004 by mudbug (log)

[tammylc]

Thanks for all the suggestions. We ended up trying two different techniques, both of which worked.

We put half the rice in a pasta strainer, with water in the pot below, and steamed it until it was hot.

For the other half, we put it in a pyrex dish, added some water, covered it in foil, and put it in a 300 degree oven until it was hot.

I wasn't interested in pilaf or fried rice or anything like that, because I was just using the rice to top with a spicy chick pea stew, so I wanted it plain. But if I encounter a bunch of leftover rice again in the future, I'll review them...

[bigorre]

I second microwave