Rice

[RickOShay]

I typically just eat white rice. Well that is a mouth half full of rice and half full of some other type of food that tastes good with it.

[RickOShay]

Originally Posted by MMM

No one puts soy sauce on rice in Japan.

One of my Japanese friends commented once that putting soy sauce on rice will give you cancer.. i think he was joking.. but case in point with the no soy sauce on rice thing here.

[MissMisa]

Originally Posted by steven

There are a lot of different kinds and qualities of soy sauce. While it is mostly used as an ingredient, people do use it as a sauce. I guess that's where the English name came from.

You can use regular old soy sauce for sashimi, but there is a difference when you use better soy sauce for stuff like that. If you eat a lot of sashimi, you start to appreciate those things I suppose. I had no idea until I came to Japan.

There is actually a soy sauce flavored ice cream in the town next to mine. I haven't tried it yet, but I might get around to it some day.

By the way, MissMisa, you're from England, right? Do people there generally not put soy sauce on rice, or is that just your personal preference?

Ah, I see. I want to try that ice cream haha, sounds a bit odd though.

Yeah I'm in England, I've never heard of doing that. Usually rice is plain, it comes as a side to a main meal. If it's on it's own, you can make it with egg or mixed with chicken, spring onions, etc to make it a main meal. (Actually, thinking about it, putting soy sauce on rice seems pretty nasty to me. It'd just be a soaked up pool of soggy rice :S ergh.)

I'm sure there will be people that do that, just none that I know of.

[steven]

Originally Posted by RickOShay

One of my Japanese friends commented once that putting soy sauce on rice will give you cancer.. i think he was joking.. but case in point with the no soy sauce on rice thing here.

Case in point? Did you read my earlier post?

As far as putting soy sauce on rice causing cancer goes... I don't think so. If it did I'd imagine cancer to be a much bigger killer in Japan than it presently is seeing as how many meals consist of rice with soy sauce in it (I'm talking about non-white rice...). As MissMisa pointed out, soy sauce is used as an ingredient a lot of the time and it is included in your rice whether you know it or not a lot of the time.

What I would think to be true is this, though: Putting soy sauce on rice (as in covering it till it's all brown) can't be a healthy thing. The amount of sodium in soy sauce makes it a bit of a dangerous ingredient in that respect (in my opinion). That much sodium can't be good for you! But who knows? Doctors and magazine articles always seem to change their minds about those kinds of things.

One of the Japanese in those links that I found pointed out something interesting. While Japanese often find it "offensive" to put soy sauce on rice, if it's for yourself then who really cares. If you serve it to other people it would definately be rude. However, there are people who put mayonaise on rice and don't get as much guff for doing so. If you go into class rooms when kids are eating lunch and there is mayonaise available (for salad dressing), you might see a kid squirting a bunch of mayonaise in their rice. I'm not sure I could take mayonaise over soy sauce on my rice. Either one seems wildly unhealthy and a complete waste on the rice that people grow around here.

[ishikawa]

It's weird with everybody calling it Soy Sauce and here I am, calling it Shoyu because that's how I'm used to saying it. xD

But Shoyu is just gross. I'm sorry, I know this is for rice but aljflasfjas.

[steven]

Originally Posted by ishikawa

It's weird with everybody calling it Soy Sauce and here I am, calling it Shoyu because that's how I'm used to saying it. xD

But Shoyu is just gross. I'm sorry, I know this is for rice but aljflasfjas.

しょうゆこと! I haven't called it soy sauce in a long time, and it feels a lot more natural to say "shoyu". Which sounds like "show you". So when I say "I'm gonna show you guys a movie" in class or something, the kids always have a ball.

In Hawaiian restaurants in california, the rice is always like way more sticky than regular rice (there). It seems even more sticky than the rice I've had in Japan. Is realy Hawaiian style rice like that, or is that just a California style Hawaiian food thing?

[Nyororin]

Just last year I helped my friend take her rice to the "senzai"

I think you mean "senmai"
We have a little single serving size machine in our kitchen. The rice tastes better and stays fresher longer if you store it in the brown state and then only polish it before cooking. Also - different meals do better with different levels of polishing, so it`s nice to be able to adjust that on the fly for every meal.

The "best answer" is an interesting look at this. The reason given is 『お金がない人の食事』. In other words, it's considered a "poor man's food".

I think something that you need to keep in mind is that the answers given are of the same level of quality as you might find on Yahoo! Answers. Just because it is the "best" answer doesn`t make it a correct answer. It`s just the one that the asker liked the best. Factuality has little to do with it.

Something can "feel" like a poor person`s food, but not actually have ever been a poor person`s food. I`d say it would fall into the same category as canned tuna on rice - another "poor" food... That has NEVER been cheap (still isn`t), but just has that "feeling". Rice was not cheap in the past - it has only gotten cheaper. But because of the simplicity of the ingredients, and loneliness of the thought of just rice and soy sauce - it feels like something someone with no money might eat.

I`ve tried to come up with something comparable from the US, but can`t as there isn`t really any main diet staple that used to be a sort of gourmet food like rice.
Maybe an easy way to think of it would be, say, making cereal with tap water instead of milk. It seems so... poor. But the cereal (let us assume it`s the brand name, too much for what it is type) itself is NOT cheap, so if you really think about it, it`s just something that feels poor. A real poor person wouldn`t have the money to buy the cereal - just as a poor person in the past in Japan wouldn`t have been able to buy the rice. They`d be eating something else.

[steven]

I think you mean "senmai"


That was funny! I think I noticed I messed that up and thought I caught it in an edit. I laughed the first time, and it's still funny :P. I can't believe I let that slip.

That would be nice to have different styles of rice throughout the week! I haven't heard about keeping it brown until you cook it thing before. I'll have to talk to my girlfriend about that and see if we can't do that the next time we get a bag 'o rice.

I definately get what you're saying Nyororin. It's just that the sentiment that it's a "poor persons food" seems to be what Japanese people feel about it whether it's true or not. I talked to my girlfriend about it tonight again and told her that the guy in that article went to Kanazawa to check out the soy sauce there-- which is close by to where we live. She said her dad has a lot of good soy sauce (he likes sashimi a lot) and she mentioned that she had seen some that was made for putting on rice! I'm sure that soy sauce was not cheap at all.

[seiki]

I like it as plain white rice. It has a slightly sweet and gluteny taste that way. Soy sauce just messes everything up. And furikake lol

[peterv20]

i love asian rice but with a very nontraditional small pat of real butter on top. depending on my mood..soy sauce and little kimchi on the side.