- cross-posted to:
- leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- cross-posted to:
- leftymemes@lemmy.dbzer0.com
You must log in or register to comment.
We in Slovenia have lunch in school for 3€, it used to be 2 a couple of years ago.
Every time I cook rice it comes out bad. Tips? I’d like to be able to make edible rice without purchasing an appliance. Movies and history tell me this is possible??
Just get a rice cooker. It’s worth it.
If it helps, you can think of a rice cooker as a “boil under all the water is gone” hotplate. They’re great for soups.
Cooking rice is a notoriously hard problem (and for that reason I recommend noodles instead) but my tip is:
- Don’t (!) do the 2:1 thing where you mix 2 cups of water with 1 cup of rice. Some of the water will boil off and the ratio will be distorted, except if you close your cooking pot, in which case it begins to foam like crazy and give you something to clean up
- Do just fill a large pot with lots of water and make it boil; then when it boils add the rice and cook a certain time with the pot open. I’ve made the best rice this way.
Just turn down the heat when it starts boiling and you won’t have any mess at all. Boiling pretty much anything without using a lid is just plain dumb and a waste of energy. The only exception being if the point of boiling is to reduce water content.
Plain white basmati rice.
One cup rice. If it’s not washed, wash it.
2 1/4 cups water.
1 heaping teaspoon salt.
Put rice, salt, and water in pot.
Bring to boil. Stir a little to keep rice from sticking too much.
Soon as it boils, take off heat, put heat to low, then put pot back on heat and put a lid on it.
~ 20 minutes later, check. Should not be any water in the bottom of the pot. If no water, eat!
I usually eyeball my rice so I use the finger method which is,
Rinse and drain your rice in a sieve first
Add it to the pot and level it off
Put your index finger on top of the rice and add cold water till it touches your first knuckle
Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cover until cooked
You can always buy a rice cooker but I think it’s good to learn how to cook without specific instruments, it also cuts down clutter in the kitchen.
Level 1
2 to 1 2 cups of water, bring it to a boil 1 cup of rice, add after water is boiling Reduce heat to simmer (simmer is less than medium but higher than just warm, on my stove it goes up to 10, I turn it down to 2.4). Put on lid Wait 20 minutes Eat
If it starts to boil over with the lid on just lift the lid so it will go back down. I add either some oil and salt or some (1 or 2 tblsp) salted butter to the water. People will tell you to rinse the rice first, but that’s level 2, get to level 1.
Thank you friend
It’s possible but the cheapest rice cooker is going to be more consistent than a seasoned pro. I can cook rice fairly well without a cooker but 1 out of 10 times it’s awful.
I’m seriously baffled by the amount of people in this thread having issues with something as simple as boiling plain rice. What the hell, its not fucking rocket science. Do you have trouble boiling pasta too!?
Bad news, but also I am relieved to hear that Ricefail is an apparently common experience.
That’s why you learn to make fried rice. Just use day old badly cooked rice.
Add rice and water in a 1:2 ratio (by volume, eg. 2dl rice to 4dl water for 3-4 people), add salt and heat to a boil. When it boils, turn down heat so it only just simmers slightly and wait until no excess water is left. Keep the lid on the whole time. This method works with jasmin and basmati white rice for me.
I cook rice without a rice cooker all the time, and some of the tips you’re getting seem dubious to me. Rice is pretty forgiving though, so maybe those recipes work, but I do it a bit different.
I treat all species of rice exactly the same, and they all come out perfect. Short/medium grain rice comes out just sticky enough so you can grab chunks of it with chopsticks, long grain rice comes out beautifully fluffy, no stickage, with all the grains nicely separated.
I use a 1:1 rice to water ratio, plus an extra quarter cup of water. That bit is important - the extra quarter cup is what evaporates off and escapes as it boils/simmers, the rest is absorbed into the rice. Doesn’t matter if I’m cooking one cup of rice or ten, I use an equal amount of water plus a quarter cup.
I bring the water to a boil first, then dump the rice in. Wash it or don’t - I usually don’t, and the difference is slight. Once the rice is in, I turn it down to a simmer, put a kitchen towel over the pot, then squish the lid down over the towel, onto the pot. The towel helps make a better seal to trap more of the steam, but without the danger of making a pressure bomb. The towel also prevents condensation from collecting on the lid and dripping into the rice, which can make it soggy towards the end of the cook. I simmer it for 20 minutes, turn off the heat, then let it rest for another 20, with the lid still on. Leave the lid on until after it’s rested, or else some steam will escape and your rice might end up “al dente”. Once it’s rested, take the lid off and stir it to fluff it up a bit, and you’re golden.
I’ve been making it that way for years with several different kinds of rice, and it’s worked like a charm for all of em.
Cook on lowest heat. Check in 20 minutes. If dry, add water. If watery, drain the excess or continue cooking into porridge.
I have better luck with a pot on the stove than a rice cooker. Start with some olive oil, add the rice, add water so the water line is 1cm above the rice line. High heat. Stir occasionally. Once it’s at a full boil, give it a final stir, turn down to low and put a lid on it. Let sit for 10 min. Turn stove off. Serve with butter, pepper, salt. Boom.
Ok. Let’s do this! If you have a 4 cup pyrex/microwavable measuring cup, it is much easier.
- Sauce pan with a lid. Nonstick is fine.
- 2 cups of rice using dry measuring cup
- 3 cups of water
- Salt if using unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons of butter
- Put empty pan on stove and set heat to medium-high. If these are steel pans, stick to medium. Go towards high if nonstick as it takes a bit to heat up.
- Put water and butter in microwavable cup and throw it in the microwave until it starts to simmer, maybe 3 minutes? Depends on microwave and dish.
- While you are waiting on microwave, put dry rice in pan and gently stir/fold. They will start to turn white, but don’t let them burn. If you need to take the pan off and turn the heat down, do it. We are just preheating the rice and pan up. Add salt if needed.
- Get ready. As soon as that water is hot enough to boil or close to, take it out, pour it in the pan. It will be violent.
- Do a quick stir, throw the lid on, and turn the heat down to the lowest setting. The water should fully cover the rice.
- Walk away. The bottom might toast a little, but that is fine as long as it doesn’t full on burn.
After 20 minutes or so, you can do a real quick check and if it looks kind of wet, throw the lid back on and wait.
At this point, you should have perfectly acceptable rice. Take the lid off, stir the rice with a more folding motion to let it steam any additional moisture out.
I love my Instant Pot. You can probably find used ones now. It makes perfect rice and I use it to make oatmeal from steel cut oats nearly every morning. I also use it to steam vegetables like broccoli, especially potatoes for when I make mashed potatoes.
Seconded. Great rice. Excellent flexible do-everything-reasonably-well appliance.
Rinsing rice does wonders. Without a rice cooker you’ll need to strain it, but it’s still worth it.
- Measure rice by volume. Let’s say 2 cups worth
- Put into fine colendar and rinse until the water comes out clear. Mixing with your hand will speed this up. You can also do this in the pot you’re going to cook in and dump water out
- Put strained rice in your pot
- Add cold water. The ratio of water to rice matters a lot and varies by species of rice. The ratio will be printed on whatever container your rice came in. For Jasmin rice it’s 2 water to 1 rice, so for our two cups of rice you’ll need 4 cups of water
- Cover, turn on medium-high heat, being to boil. Don’t go far because it will boil over when it does boil
- Turn the heat down to low, crack the lid, and set a timer. The amount of time needed will vary based on rice. For Jasmin, 15 minutes is a good check-in time
- Pop the lid. See water bubbling up? If yes, replace lid and come back in a few minutes. If not, use a wooden spoon to get a peek at the bottom of the pot. See water? If yes, replace lid and come back fairly soon to check again. If not, your rice is done. Turn the heat off, fluff, enjoy.
We made rice for years using this method and it is a very reliable cooking method. Rice doesn’t really leave you a lot of wiggle room though, which is where a rice cooker comes in handy. As an added bonus, some rice cookers come with water lines in them. I measure my dry rice into the cooker, rinse using the cooker, dump most of the water out, and fill to the appropriate level.
Different species of rice have very different textures and somewhat (subtle) different flavorss.
Some rice, like basmati, can be cooked using the pasta method (intentionally use way too much water and strain the excess off after the rice is cooked). I guess all rice could be cooked that way, but you would be giving up some starch.
It’s possible, the secret ingredient is keeping an eye on it.
Measure one cup of rice, whatever the volume of the cup is now add double the amount of water and bring to a boil. Once it starts boiling lower the heat.
Here comes the secret ingredient, keep an eye on it. You’ll soon notice it’s not as watery anymore, but you still see bubbling. Stir and check it’s not getting stuck to the bottom. When you see the water is practically gone, remove from the heat and cover pot with lid. Let rest for 5 mins.
Done, perfect rice!
If it’s starting to get stuck to the bottom, removing and letting it rest with a lid on for a few minutes usually helps in unsticking it and making it fluffier.
If you didn’t keep an eye on it well enough and it’s burning at the bottom, remove immediately and transfer as much of the unburnt rice to another pot, cover and let it rest. (Add water to the burnt bottom in the original pot and cover as well, it will help with the cleaning)
Jasmine rice. Makes a huge difference if you like white rice. Tastes like from a restaurant and pleasantly sticky.
Just thinking; maybe if people stop trying to get rid of political target and instead started target billionaires, then maybe, just maybe, the world would be a better place for everyone.
Just thinking.
I guess that’s the main problem with billionaires, is we didn’t pick any of them, and once they’re a super billionaire we can’t really do much about them.
Oh don’t buy their products? They’re invested in everything, most food brands are just different names for the same factories. Oracle billionaire? WTF are you going to do to protest Oracle? Politicians we, are supposed to, pick. Billionaires become billionaires generally by being the worst, then there isn’t anything we can do about it.
So we need to get the politicians on our side to keep the billionaires in check… or violent revolution. I’m a pacifist so I like the first one more, but if the majority is up for the second one, I’m not gonna say ya’ll are wrong.
Billionaires are a problem, but not the problem. Weath Inequality inherent in the economic system is the real enemy. Billionaires are only a symptom and a lightning rod.
Billionaires are a political target. It’s not about forgoing ideology, but having correct ideology.
I can buy oats and flour on the cheap around here, but chickpeas and dried beans? That’s very quickly sounding like $10 a day.
Bruh how? You can get kilograms of dried beans for $10.
It’s more expensive for canned beans but for $10 are you eating 5 cans of organic beans a day?
Where are you buying dried beans?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BBVFBGW?tag=sacapuntas9-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1
These are 1.28 a pound, if you have a winco or costco you can get much cheaper.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09SHBKHTH?tag=sacapuntas9-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1
These are 2 dollars a pound.
So like you would turn this into hummus and eat it with bread/tortillas you made from flour.
There’s no Amazon in Denmark. Basically anything bought from Amazon either comes from Germany or the UK, which makes Amazon probably the worst, most expensive option for any reason.
Ahh interesting! In Denmark what is the cheap protein replacement? In the US it’s mostly all dried beans.
Well let me think…
I know a few local supermarkets sell frozen chickpeas in bags of 500 grams. And I think, off the top of my head, the price ranges between 15 dkk ($2.24) and 40 dkk ($5.97), depending on if there’s a sale on and which supermarket I go to. I know that Rema 1000 is on the cheaper end, and frozen vegetable products tend to go on sale pretty often, but it’s never the same products, so it’s very unpredictable when chickpeas go on sale. These prices include tax, as tax is not excluded from products in stores.
That means that 3 kg of frozen chickpeas would be between $14.44 (uaually when on sale) or $36.02.
Now, I can get dried beans and peas in much larger bulk from the various Arab stores in Copenhagen, but buying bags of dried goods from those stores comes with the risk of getting pantry moths. I’m still battling those little fuckers from the time I bought a large 5 kg bag of really high quality rice two years ago.
Maybe chickpeas are expensive where you live, or maybe you miscalculated. Either way, take a look at my numbers for comparison.
We can get a 3.63kg bag of chickpeas here for $7.49 (CAD). Assuming you fulfill all your Calorie and protein needs from chickpeas alone (2500 Calories and 150g protein per day), it comes out to about $600/year. That’s $1.64/day. In order to be $10/day, you’d have to pay 6x as much for your chickpeas, so that same 3.63kg bag would have to cost $45.50.
deleted by creator
Where potato
I feel like since they are mostly water weight, the math doesn’t always look great. But let’s go through it!
For example: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Russet-Potatoes-10-lb-Bag-Whole/10449951?classType=REGULAR&from=/search
10 pounds of food for $3 sounds great, but in a pound there is only 300 calories about, depending on type/peel/etc. So 3,000 calories for 3 dollars. At $1 per 1000 calories it isn’t bad.
But let’s compare to this 5 pound bag of flour for 2.38, at 3 cents an ounce:
https://www.walmart.com/search?q=flour
A pound of flour has 1,600 calories. So this bag of flour that is cheaper than the potatoes, has 8000 calories for 2.50. But you’ll need to put in some elbow grease to make it edible. Doing a sourdough is probably the cheapest way to do it since all you need is flour, water, salt, and the starter you made using flour, but it is more time intensive. So about 3,200 calories for a dollar.
Rice comes in with a very similar amount of calories, but just a little more expensive at 4 cents an ounce:
Rice is a bit easier to turn edible though, so the extra dollar might be worth it for a 5 pound bag. 2,400 calories per dollar spent.
Then oatmeal comes in as our most expensive at 7 cents an ounce.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KV4H51G?tag=sacapuntas9-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1
At once again 1600ish calories for a pound of dry oatmeal, it is 1.12 per pound. So it is creeping up closer to the price of potatoes TBH, and if you were super on a budget the oatmeal would be the first to go. But I suppose potatoes aren’t “that” much worse than oatmeal. But my thought was oatmeal is good breakfast option so wanted to include it, and the top bit is mostly setup for bottom.
Knowing this stuff is helpful to our daily lives because rich people hate us.
I think you need to include energy cost in the preparation stage. Bread requires a hot oven, which is a real amount of electricity — it’s close to $0.40/kWh where I live. From this link it says that a bread maker uses only .36kWh, but an electric oven would be more like 1.6kWh. So bakita single loaf of bread, you end up with a not insubstantial fraction of the total cost going to heating the oven.
Of course, many bulk foods require heat, so it gets a little sticky this way. Oats/oatmeal probably wins out here, as you can just soak them overnight.
It takes less time to cook than bread, but most other proteins take a bit of time to cook as well.
energy costs could probably be significantly reduced if the cooking was done on an industrial scale, so that most of the head goes into the food
Good point! Rice makers are super efficient, so rice made with that might be the winner. But honestly the cheap carbs you can stand and make edible cheaply are probably just what you gotta go with.
I’m sure all of this is correct, but you’re forgetting one thing: potatoes are the only one of these you can grow enough of to eat at home, as long as you have space for a bucket or sack or two of soil, and which basically require zero processing aside from applying heat to consume.
I agree with you that we shouldn’t actually need to know or use any of this information, and as a poor disabled person I also know that growing your own food isn’t always an option for everyone, but if it is an option, I think it at the very least puts potatoes back in the running.
You absolutely got me there! I mentioned making your own sour dough, but didn’t factor in growing potatoes.
Ok but for real tho. The average American severely underestimates how far you can get on rice, beans, lentils and chickpeas.
Rice amd beans is the most important thing on my region’s diet. You just can’t live without eating it at least once.
YOU ARE A FOOL AND THE REBELLION DEMANDS YOU EAT LAGUMES!
Capitalism demands you eat legumes or go into debt.
The rebellion demands you stay alive how you need to and organize, which in the US means eating cheap proteins as you gotta.
Serious question, if I live off just that, I end up feeling like absolute garbage. That’s even with supplementing it with greens like spinach and some other veggies and vitamin supplements. What am I missing?
Like, macro-wise, I can replace meat and other things, but it doesn’t seem to hit the same?
Would you care to elaborate on what you feel like when you try living on plants? What do you tend to eat? How long does it take before you start feeling like shit?
Judging by your last comment about it “not hitting the same” my initial thought is that the issue might not even be nutritional, possibly more psychological/subjective.
Don’t know what you’re missing because we don’t know everything you eat
Spinach gives iron so based off the information it’s not that
Every plant is trying to kill you. It doesn’t want to be eaten. It especially doesn’t want you to eat its seeds. We can detoxify most of the ones that people eat, but it costs
Eating the same plants over again can make you sick
You may not be as good at detoxifying those plants as the people who do well eating them
I know I’m a lot healthier with no plants in my diet than I have been with lots of plants
I end up feeling like absolute garbage.
Maybe, not cooking it well enough? Try changing your recipes, perhaps? Maybe more variety in spices?
Gram, pulses and dried beans (rehydrated before eating) with rice, tend to make my favourite recipes
and even though I use milk products, I feel pretty good even if it is lemonade with black-salt instead.Oh, it tastes fine, I’m saying like…energy-wise and sugar-crash-wise I feel bad. Just wondering if I’m missing something.
sugar-crash-wise
I meant the same thing.
And I seldom put sugar in my lemonade.
The rice seems to do the job
You probably need a fattier diet for your nutrition needs, since the diet listed is a carbs-and-protein diet. Try having way more nut butters / olive oil / other healthy fats
Fruit?
Maybe a shot of insulin, from the sounds of it.
Get a blood test. You could have a micronutrient deficiency. It is common to develop either vitamin D, B or iron deficiencies when you cut meat since they just aren’t as abundant outside of red meat and organ meat.
If I could get us all to protest grocery store prices by eating nothing but staples whenever there is a random price increase I would die happy XD
Well I’m vegetarian
That duck is looking pretty tasty right about now.
Hey if you have a legal place to hunt, go wild!
Buying anything but the cheapest of meats these days is eye watering. I’m not one for hunting, but I keep debating going foraging since I live near mountains in Utah. Spend the day hiking in nice weather and end the day with food you normally wouldn’t have? Sounds like a good day.
“Also, do you really NEED to sleep?”
Are split peas and chickpeas not beans?
You’re not wrong! But I felt like some people wouldn’t think of split peas, and wanted to call out more than just “beans”
A bag of dried chickpeas makes for two weeks worth of hummus.
Follow me for more health and finance advice
As long as you remember that without tahini, garlic, olive oil, salt and some lemon juice all you’re getting is pureed chickpeas.
Maybe if you’re a hummus eating coward!..
Or you get a very big bag…
👂✋ what’s that being a radical is being vegan?
To be clear, if you’re at all concerned about maintaining a food budget, even if it’s $500/week the billionaire class is still your enemy.
To be positively translucent, even someone with $1,000,000 in the bank has 1000x less than the poorest billionaire. For other disturbing facts, see https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/.
For everyone following along at home: this website is worth a click if you’ve never seen it before!
Represented as a volume is also great. If I’m not wrong, his wealth in 500€ bills is a 165 m (180 yards) cube. One million is 3 l (a little less than 0.8 gallons).
Which of course is a stupid comparison indicative of economic ignorance, because wealth does not grow linearly for anyone who doesn’t stuff their money under a mattress.
To be clear, the billionaire class is your enemy
Hey, there might be some politicians on here who can always call up their good friends whenever they need something!
To be clear, the 100 million class is also your enemy
Any billionaire can lose 90% of their wealth and have above 100 million left.
Many can lose 99% and have above 100 million left.
Some can lose 99% and still be billionaires.
The 100 millionaire will still have a million or more left after losing 99%, but that’s not “live like hogs in the fat house forever” money at least. It’s just “I don’t have to worry if I lose my job” money.
A hundredbillionaire can lose 99% of their money and not make any perceptible changes in their lifestyle.
I propose the following:
Gap individual wealth at 50000x the national median annual income. Max wealth anyone in the US could have is, at present, under 2 billion. Other countries will vary, but generally it’s plenty enough to motivate people to innovate, but nobody gets to be Bezos or Musk wealthy. Yachts should count towards this wealth gap, at a depreciation rate of 5% a year off the build cost. Primary residence doesn’t count unless it’s also used for generating income. You get to have one car, regardless of price, that doesn’t get counted towards it, and the other ones count at market value. So you can have your classic car that appreciates in price, and a daily driver - without having to worry about the classic car’s effect on your wealth limit.
Side effect is that now suddenly rich people near the gap will be a lot more interested in paying better wages to the working class. Why? Because then they’d get to keep more of their money. And to raise the median efficiently, you need to be raising wages for the poorest among us first and foremost.
Holy cow, they can lose 90% of their wealth and still be above 100 mil. The math checks out, but my gosh, how rich are they?!
It’s ridiculous.
Numbers are funny, anyway. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s net worth is closer to yours and mine than it is to Elon Musk (Forbes list currently placing them at ~100 bill and ~250 bill respectively). But that’s only in absolute terms. In reality, Jensen’s got like 8 or 9 orders of magnitude more wealth than I do depending on how far into the month we are, and on the same order of magnitude as Musk.
Either one losing 99% of their wealth would still be above a billion.
In general; I think even 2 billion is too much. Nobody needs that much money.
At best; I think no one should be able to have more than about 500 Million. You get one house, and one car for each adult family member if you’re married with non-adult kids. Adult kids don’t add uncounted vehicles; they have their own limit. Anything that is seaworthy or airworthy counts as about as much “Wealth” as you initially spent on it minus a reasonable depreciation rate yearly as determined by the market, so no buying a thing and having it lose 30% of it’s value the moment you drive it off the lot after buying it.
Additionally; to block too many shenanigans; wealth added by any property that is bought sticks; 3 years at minimum. This prevents people from storing too much excess in property and shell-gaming it. A company you own or have stake in cannot lend (in a long term) or gift you property in excess of 1% to 10% the wealth limit. (Depending on what the thing is). Companies may also not hold property or money in lieu of an individual personally; everything the company owns must have a global company function; and not personally benefit one or more people only. (Basically no executive-only or owner-only Jets; everyone from the tiniest manager on up should have access to it if there’s a business reason for it)
Oh I agree that even 2 billion is too much, but my reasoning is that proponents of capitalism often make the claim that capitalism drives innovation (you try to fill some market niche in order to get rich) so if they are right, then 2 billion should be enough that this still works.
I had yachts depreciating to zero in my example because it’s estimated that you have to spend about 10% of its’ purchase price annually anyway, so anyone keeping a 20 year old yacht around is going to be spending a lot of money on it that will fuel other parts of the economy.
I am always amazed how everyone is so focused on billionaires only
Easier to focus on a few, very public individuals.
Pareto principle. Eat the billionaires, distribute their wealth: 20% of the effort for 80% of the result.
It’s just a class that is absolutely exploring people. You can’t become a billionaire without it. You can absolutely become an honest millionaire so it wouldn’t make sense to use that.
Yeah like there are folks who are worth 10ish million who just bought a house 50ish years ago that gained a lot of value and had dual incomes that saved all their money for retirement.
100 million folks are on THIN ice, but there is probably an author or inventor out there who made something really nice and everyone they worked with was also well taken care of. Most of them are probably garbage, but not all of them have to be. Some famous actors also were well known for making sure everyone got paid what they deserved on set and were very generous.
I just don’t see getting to a billion without someone being taken advantage of on the way though.
probably an author or inventor out there who made something really nice and everyone they worked with was also well taken care of.
JK Rowling should be a billionaire, but she keeps giving money away.
Yeah but she’s a garbage human being.
I just don’t see getting to a billion without someone being taken advantage of on the way though.
By all means, show me some billionaires that never took advantage of anyone to get their billions and actually earned it. I’m down to change my view.
You really pulled the extendo grip out, huh?
Lack of understanding of class. Billionaires are just the obscene top of the top of the bourgeoisie and they do excercise disproportional power in the ruling class, but the class war isn’t only about them, it’s about the system which makes their power possible. For example China also have billionaires, but they aren’t even 1/100 of a problem there.
with 100mils you can buy two luxurious houses and still have enough money to spend a million each year which is more money than most people make in their entire life, so yea kind of on the border.
What is a union?
An arrangement where employees bargain collectively with their employer to have more leverage, usually collecting dues from members to help with things like strikes.
I think it’s called a “sindicato” in Portuguese, though in English “syndicate” means something a bit different
