The Long and Short of Rice

25 April 2006
The Long and Short of Rice

The world's most popular grain makes big moves on American menus as it finds appreciative audiences.

This article first appeared in the 1 March 2006 issue of Restaurants & Institutions (R&I).

R&I is the USA's leading source of food and business-trend information and exclusive research on operators and restaurant patrons. Editorial coverage spans the entire foodservice industry, including chains, independent restaurants, hotels and institutions. To find out more about R&I, visit its website www.foodservice411.com.

By Lisa Bertagnoli, Special to R&I

For a long time, rice was relegated to a supporting role on American menus. Pilafs, risottos and piquantly flavored rice dishes, a perennial favorite being red-tinted rice at Mexican restaurants, traditionally have appeared as side dishes.

Risotto helped change all that, with the elegant Italian presentation greatly advancing rice's reputation and shifting perceptions about where the little grains could reside on menus. Center of the plate suits many operations just fine.

As global cuisines become more popular, rice's status in foodservice is changing. According to one trade group, foodservice accounted for 42% of domestic shipments of rice in 2004, a 15% leap from 2003 (the most recent data available). Heightened interest in ethnic foods and willingness by operators to be creative with what is a low-cost food are among the reasons for the spike.

Indeed, operators say they are more interested in rice, and not just for the wonder it works with food costs. "It's very versatile," says Ryan Poli, executive chef at Butter, an 85-seat, dinner-only restaurant in Chicago. "There's more than just boiling it and serving it."

One of the best sellers on Poli's current menu is $13 Rock Shrimp and Butternut-Squash Risotto. "We sell 500 orders of risotto a week," he says. While labor-intensive, the dish has a food cost of less than 20%, a feature that's prompted Poli to explore more ways to put rice on the menu. He'd like to offer an appetizer portion of paella, but is still searching for a small pan that will yield the correct texture for the traditional Spanish dish. He's experimenting with rice sorbet to serve with crab salad, as well as a dessert of saffron-and-vanilla-scented rice pudding on a base of saffron gelée, topped with mixed berries, lime sorbet and vanilla foam.

Out of the East

The most familiar rice is a long-grain white variety, perhaps parboiled to cut the cooking time. That, too, is changing as the world's cuisines infiltrate American cooking, says Bruce Cost, Asian concepts partner at multiconcept operator Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises in Chicago and author of several books on the region's cuisines.

For instance, Cost has noticed more colored rices on menus. "I used them a long time ago, but now [operators and customers] are becoming more familiar with them," he says.

Black rice with Chinese sausage and scallions cooked in a clay pot appears as a $7 side dish at Jujube, a casual, 40-seat noodles-and-dim-sum restaurant in Chapel Hill, N.C. Corporate Chef Charlie Deal, who discovered clay-pot cooking when traveling in China, says the dish is a good seller, most often ordered as an accompaniment to vegetable and protein entrées.

Black rice also appears on Jujube's menu as a sweet rice pudding made with coconut milk; another pudding is made from aromatic jasmine rice and flavored with coconut and lime. The puddings are priced at $5, and the food cost for each hovers around 50 cents. "It's pretty darned cheap," Deal says.

Chefs' main concern with rice is the cooking method, especially for dishes such as risotto, typically labor-intensive and made to order. While chef at Oliveto, an Italian restaurant in Oakland, Calif., Deal cooked a risotto base until two-thirds done, and then cooled it in a thin layer on sheet pans. Cooks finished the dish with chicken stock, cheese and whatever ingredients the day's menu called for. Precooking the rice cut the finishing time to five to 15 minutes, which contributed to the item's popularity: On a night with 180 covers, 40 people would order risotto, Deal says.

Cooks and Cookers

Chefs suggest several methods for cooking rice meant as a side dish or as a component in another dish, such as a stir-fry or Asian bowl. Cost uses a commercial rice cooker, and in the Asian style, does not add salt, oil or butter.

Deal, too, recommends a rice cooker, but advises holding cooked rice in a warmer, not the cooker. "You wear them out that way," he says.

Mike Smith, chef-owner of 2900, a 65-seat fine-dining restaurant in Dallas, favors another method. He places rice (unrinsed, right out of the bag) in a hotel pan, adds roasted garlic, butter, olive oil or other flavorings, covers it with two inches of water, and cooks at 350F for 30 minutes. "Fluff it with a fork and it's perfect every time," Smith says.

Rice appears on 2900's menu as asparagus-and-mushroom risotto paired with lamb shank ($26); green seaweed rice with wild striped bass ($24); and as rice pudding ice cream ($6).

"I love rice; we work with it all the time," Smith says. "If you looked at our menu over the past four years, there's 20 different ways we've used rice."

Gaining Grains

In terms of rice consumption, America is an anomaly. Globally, rice is the most common grain, with Asian per capita consumption estimated to be 230 pounds annually. Here, vastly overshadowed by wheat, per capita rice consumption stands at just 27 pounds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

As Asian cuisines continue to influence American menus, interest in types beyond white grows. While nearly 40,000 varieties of rice are in cultivation worldwide, only a handful will gain favor on American menus. Here are a few that through availability will:

Arborio: Widely available in the United States, this plump-grained Italian rice is the classic upon which risotto is based.

Basmati: A fragrant, long-grain, non-glutinous rice favored in India and readily available here. It cooks to a dry, fluffy texture that is excellent for pilafs and, with its subtly nutty flavor, also can be served plain.

Bomba: With short, plump grains that readily absorb liquid while retaining shape and texture, it is thought by many to be the ultimate paella rice. Similar choices include Valencia and Calasparra.

Black: Widely seen in Indonesia and Thailand, this sweet glutinous rice is most often made into a simple pudding served for breakfast or dessert.

Jasmine: Floral in fragrance and flavor, this staple rice of Thai cuisine has a slightly stickier texture than long-grain white rice and a distinctly pleasant taste. It often is served plain as an accompaniment to curries, or as a pilaf.

Red: Aromatic rice with flavor and aroma similar to that of roasted nuts or popcorn. There are several varieties, each with slender grains that cook dry, separate and fluffy.

Sushi: Also known as sweet rice, sticky rice or glutinous rice, these stubby grains adhere well for easy sushi rolling. Unlike many rice varieties, the volume doubles rather than triples in cooking.

Lisa Bertagnoli is a Chicago-based freelance writer.

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