16.1 Corn, rice and wheat

Rice recipes → Polenta, grits and cornmeal recipes →

What a grain is

Most kernels grow inside a protective hull, or husk. Under the hull every kernel has the same three parts:

• Bran: the tough skin around the outside. It gives fiber and B vitamins.
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• Endosperm: the biggest part, made of starch and some protein. Flour is milled mainly from the endosperm.
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• Germ: the smallest part. It is the only part that holds fat, and it is rich in thiamin.
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Milling pulls these three parts apart. Most mills use steel blades. A stone mill works more gently and is less likely to grind the grain too far. Stone-ground products always say so on the label, and they usually cost more.

Corn

Of all the grains, only corn is also eaten fresh, as a vegetable. People in Central America were drying it as a grain thousands of years before anyone ate it fresh.

• Cornmeal is dried, ground dent corn, a kind of corn that can be yellow, white or blue. It goes into breads, coats food for frying, and is cooked into polenta or mush. It feels gritty and tastes sweet and starchy.
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• Hominy, also called posole or samp, is dried corn soaked in hydrated lime or lye. The soak swells the kernels so the hulls come loose. Hulls and germ are taken off and the kernels dried again. Hominy looks like white or yellow popcorn but is soft and chewy, with a smoky, sour taste. You can buy it dried, or cooked in cans, for side dishes, soups and stews.
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• Masa harina is a fine flour ground from dried hominy. It makes tortillas, tamales and breads.
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• Grits are dried hominy ground into tiny white grains. They can be baked, but most are eaten as a hot breakfast cereal with butter or cheese on top. Quick and instant grits cook faster.
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Rice

Rice is the starchy seed of a grass that grows partly in water. It probably first came from the Indian subcontinent or Southeast Asia, and today more than half the people in the world live on it.

Rice fits into almost any cuisine because it takes on the taste of the food around it. It is a side dish, but also goes into stews and curries, stuffings for vegetables and game birds, salads, puddings, breads and drinks such as Mexican horchata.

Rice is sorted by the size of the grain:

• Long-grain rice is the most popular and the most useful. Cooked well, the grains stay firm, fluffy and apart. Overcook it or stir it often and it turns sticky.
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• Medium-grain rice sits between the other two in look and starch. It goes sticky as it cools, so serve it fresh and very hot.
• Short-grain rice has the most starch. It cooks tender and sticky, and it is the traditional rice for Italian risotto, Japanese sushi and Spanish paella.
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Every grain of rice starts out brown. Leave the bran on and you have brown rice. Polish the bran away (pearling) and you have white rice. Either kind can then be made into converted rice or instant rice.

• Converted rice, or parboiled rice, is partly boiled before milling, which takes off surface starch and drives nutrients from the bran into the endosperm. It keeps more nutrients than plain white rice and tastes the same. It is not precooked, and it actually takes longer to cook than white rice.
• Instant rice, or quick-cooking rice, has been fully cooked and then flash-frozen. It saves time but loses some nutrients and flavor.

Some rices are known by name:

• Arborio is a round, short-grain rice, white, mild and very sticky. It is the rice of Italian risotto.
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• Basmati is a fine long-grain rice from the foothills of the Himalayas and a favorite in Indian cooking. It smells strongly, tastes sweet and delicate, and is a creamy yellow. It is usually aged to bring out its aroma. Wash it well before cooking.
• Jasmine is another fragrant long-grain rice. It grows in Thailand and is used all over Southeast Asia.
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• Brown rice has lost only its husk. The bran left on it makes it chewy and nutty. It needs more water and more time than white rice.
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• Sticky rice is a short-grain rice with fat, round, pearly white grains and a lot of starch. Cooked, it clumps into a sticky mass. Soak it for several hours first. It is also called glutinous rice or sweet rice. Ground into flour, it makes dumplings and pastries. Sake, mirin, Chinese Shaoxing wine and rice vinegar are all made by fermenting it.
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• Wild rice is not rice at all. It is the seed of a different, reed-like water plant, cooked the same way as rice. The grains are long, thin and dark brown to black, nuttier and chewier than rice. It comes in three grades: giant (the longest grains and the best), fancy (medium grains, for most uses) and select (short grains, for soups, pancakes and baking). It is grown in California, Idaho and Washington. Serve it with game, use it to stuff poultry, or mix it with ordinary rice. It is costly, but a little goes a long way.

Cooking rice

Rinsing washes off dirt and debris, but it also washes away some nutrients. Most rice grown in America is clean and free of insects, so it does not need rinsing. Soaking softens the grains, takes off some starch and shortens the cooking.

As a rule of thumb, use twice as much liquid as rice. Each kind of rice wants its own amount, though:

Cooked rice and safety

Raw rice and cooked rice are handled very differently. Any cooked starch, rice and pasta included, counts as a potentially hazardous food: one that lets harmful bacteria grow. Uncooked rice is on the safe list.

The figures for any cooked food, rice included, are these:

• Hot holding: keep it at 60°C (140°F) or hotter.
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• Cooling: within two hours it must drop to 20°C (68°F) from 60°C (140°F); within four more hours it must reach 4°C (40°F).
• Cold storage: 4°C (40°F) or colder.
• Reheating: bring it to 74°C (165°F) or hotter and keep it there for 15 seconds or more.

The danger zone, cooling and reheating are explained in full with food safety. see chapter 2: The danger zone

Wheat

Most wheat is milled into flour. Some of it reaches the table as grain: cracked wheat, bulgur and couscous serve as starchy sides and go into soups, salads, breads and dishes of ground meat. All three are mild and a little chewy. They should be fluffy when cooked, never soggy or sticky.

Wheat germ and wheat bran are sold on their own for their nutrition. They are rarely eaten plain; cooks add them to bread and other dishes.

• Cracked wheat is the whole kernel, called a wheat berry, broken into coarse or fine pieces. It is raw, and you should see the white inside of the kernel. Because the bran and germ are still there, it is high in fiber but does not keep long. Whole berries need several hours of soaking before cooking; cracked wheat cooks through with a long, gentle simmer.
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• Bulgur is a wheat berry with the bran taken off, then steamed, dried and ground. It is an even golden brown, which cracked wheat is not, and it has a nutty taste and texture. It cooks faster than cracked wheat, and one cannot usually stand in for the other in a recipe. For a salad, bulgur only needs soaking and draining; in a stew or pilaf it needs a short cook. It goes well with grilled meats and can replace rice in a stuffing. The fine grind goes into packet mixes for tabouli; the medium grind is the one sold in bulk.
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• Couscous is durum wheat with the bran and germ removed. The endosperm is steamed, pressed into tiny pellets and dried. It comes in several sizes, and medium-fine sells best. Cooks steam it in a pot called a couscousière, set above simmering water or stock, and it is the classic partner for North African stews. Use it any way you would use rice.
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Steaming is taught with the other moist-heat methods. see chapter 9: Hotter than poaching, but gentle

Buckwheat, millet, oats and quinoa

Buckwheat is neither wheat nor a true grain. Botanically it is a fruit, from a distant relative of rhubarb, but cooks prepare and serve it like a grain. The whole kernel is a groat. Most of what is sold as buckwheat is kasha: groats that have been hulled and roasted.

Kasha is reddish brown and tastes strong, nutty and almost burnt. It is sold whole or ground. Whole kasha cooks into separate grains; finer grinds turn sticky. Serve it as a side dish, often with pasta or vegetables, or chill it for salads.

Raw groats are ground into buckwheat flour for pasta, blini and pancakes. The flour has no proteins that form gluten, and it stays sandy and grainy, so it cannot take the place of all the wheat flour in a bread or cake.

Millet is a cereal grain high in protein, white, mild and a little nutty. In the United States it is grown mostly to feed animals. Cook it like rice, or toast it and cook it like kasha. It can be ground into flour, which bakes best mixed with wheat flour. The husk is very hard, so millet is usually sold hulled.

Oats are probably the most accepted whole grain in the American diet after rice. People eat them as hot porridge every day and bake them into breads, muffins and cookies.

• An oat groat is the whole kernel with only the husk removed, so it keeps its bran and germ.
• Steel-cut oats, or Irish oats, are toasted groats chopped into small bits with steel blades.
• Rolled oats, sold as old-fashioned oats, are groats steamed and then pressed into flat flakes.
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• Quick-cooking oats are rolled oats cut smaller so they cook faster. Rolled and quick oats can swap for each other in a recipe.
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• Instant oats are part-cooked and dried before rolling, so they need only boiling water. Do not use them in place of the others in most recipes.
• Oat bran is the outer covering of the hulled oat, sold on its own. Rolled and cut oats still carry some of it.

"Oatmeal" means two things: the processed groats, which are gray-white, starchy and sweet, and the thick, soft, full-flavored porridge cooked from them.

Quinoa comes from the Andes in South America, where the Incas called it the "mother grain". It is not a true grain, but its seeds are cooked like one. Each seed is a tiny flattened ball, about 1/16 inch across, with the germ in a ring around it. Cooked, the seeds turn see-through and taste slightly smoky, a little like sesame. Colors run from dark brown to nearly white; the bigger, whiter kinds are the most common and are thought the best.

The seeds wear a bitter natural coat that keeps birds and insects away. Before cooking, rinse them in a fine-mesh colander under cool water for several minutes. Then cook quinoa as you would rice; it takes up about twice its own volume of water. Toasting brings out a nuttier taste: give it about 5 minutes in a dry, hot pan before the liquid goes in.

Quinoa can be a hot breakfast cereal or take the place of rice. It thickens soups and stews, and it goes into salads, breads, desserts and casseroles. Quinoa flour is gluten-free. The seeds are a complete protein, with all the essential amino acids. For long storage keep quinoa in the refrigerator or freezer. The leaves can be cooked like spinach.

Grains and nutrition

Grains supply vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber, but milling and cooking change how much. The less a grain is refined, the more fiber it keeps. Rice is low in sodium and calories and has all the essential amino acids. White rice and oats are often enriched with calcium, iron and B vitamins.