Rice

[seiki]

mmm spoiled cabbage. *shudders*

[JustaJ]

I prefer plain steamed rice with most of the food that I eat. I like the rice to help cut the flavor of the sides I'm eating it with. I find having plain white rice gives a nice neutral base, especially when eating a variety of different sides. If the rice is flavored with something, I figure, sometimes it might not go well with a certain side dish or that there is nothing to help cleanse the palate for the next dish/bite.

It has never occurred to me to pour straight soy sauce on my steamed rice. That gives me the same feeling as eating a bowl of pasta slathered in ketchup, the ketchup just overpowers everything else. I have no problem with eating a rice dish covered with a soy sauce based side dish or having soy sauce mixed in my fried rice while it is cooking or with tamago rice, but straight soy sauce seems a bit too strong on white rice since I imagine it would soak up into the rice and leave every bite of rice tasting much too salty.

[ishikawa]

Originally Posted by steven

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?

It's probably a California Style Hawaiian food thing. Oregon has some pretty gross "Hawaiian Food" which isn't really Hawaiian too. Most rice in Hawaii, rest. and otherwise is normal.

[JayT]

Sticky rice is a thai thing, hawaii has fried rice and brown riiiice and balut

[RickOShay]

Originally Posted by steven

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.

I don't think it causes cancer either, but I was illustrating that people generally do not have a positive view of just putting soy sauce on white rice here, and looking back at the post you made and the link you put up, it seems to support that. I took MMM's comment about "no one putting soy sauce on rice" figuratively. I do not think he meant for it to be taken literally.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by 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.

Covering it with senzai would be pretty surprising and definitely a new experience for me too. I think I`d pass on eating it after that...

Actually, though it does depend on the area, it`s usually called "seimai". The in-laws call it senmai, so I am guessing the same thing goes for your area too.

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.

Usually the machines offer a bunch of different settings ranging from just taking the outside dustiness off all the way to just leaving the very center. The outer coating tends to be denser than the inside and deal with changes in temperature better. Once you`ve polished it, the rice slowly dries out completely and starts to form little cracks that make it sort of "melt" when you cook it. This is part of the reason that last year`s rice is usually thrown out - it tastes like crap when you cook it.

The seimaiki we have is this one. Ignore their suggested price - it`s insane. You can find it for about 8000~10000 at any normal electronics store (Yamada, Eiden, Joshin, 100man Volt if you`ve got those around there, etc). You can do up to 5 gou at once, and it`s a free adjustment so you can set it however you like.

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.

I wasn`t debating whether there were some people out there who did indeed eat rice with soy sauce. I just seriously doubt that the practice came from the eating habits of Japanese during the occupation.
Prior to it being made into a completely liquid sauce (Heian era), there was a form of shoyu (forget the name at this moment) which retained the grain and which was eaten on rice or other things. It was a very high class food.

I was trying to point out that just because people say it isn`t eaten because it feels like a poor person`s food doesn`t mean that it ever WAS eaten as a poor person`s food - which would kind of make the probability of people eating it in the poor years after the war pretty low.

[YukisUke]

Whenever I have rice I just eat it plain or with cheese on it. But most of the time, I eat it plain. My family thinks I'm weird for that. LOL!!

[ishikawa]

Originally Posted by JayT

Sticky rice is a thai thing, hawaii has fried rice and brown riiiice and balut

The only brown rice I've noticed in Hawaii is if you're
A) Asking for Brown Rice at a rest.
B) You just eat Brown Rice
C) You go to school and they give you disgusting brown rice.

Otherwise, it is white rice, which is more often seen, in my opinion, away from public school than brown rice. Fried rice is common, obviously as well.

[ishikawa]

Originally Posted by YukisUke

Whenever I have rice I just eat it plain or with cheese on it. But most of the time, I eat it plain. My family thinks I'm weird for that. LOL!!

.... why cheese?

[caisaki]

Originally Posted by MMM

How do you like your rice?

I like my rice with furikake sometimes, but I like them most when they're mixed with dissolved sugar in brown rice vinegar. Yum!