The food lab better home cooking through science ( PDFDrive ) 933

flavor On the other, you’ve got rice with great nutty, toasty flavor but relatively little creaminess The question is: how do you get your risotto both creamy and nutty? Isolating Starch Here’s my theory: I know that starch can break down under high heat Ever compare the thickening power of a very light roux to a dark-cooked roux? The blonder it is, the better is thickens Perhaps a similar thing was happening to the starch in my rice as I toasted it, robbing it of it’s thickening power To test this theory, I had to first isolate the starch used for thickening from the rest of the grain Now, some folks claim that the starch that thickens the sauce in a risotto comes from within the rice grains themselves—indeed, they say, that’s the very reason you have to stir the rice as it cooks The jostling movement of the grains causes them to rub against each other, slowly scraping starch off and into the liquid This could be true, but it doesn’t exactly explain how many of the more modern no-stir risotto cooking methods work so well Is it possible that this thickening starch is simply on the surface of the grains to begin with? There’s a very easy way to test whether this is true or not: rinse the rice Reserving the excess starch before toasting I ran my rice grains under a cold tap in a metal strainer, rubbing them and watching as a starchy, milky white liquid collected underneath I then cooked them just as I had before (see here) What I ended up with was risotto with very little creaminess at all Cooking a second batch of rinsed rice according to the traditional method of stirring the entire time produced a risotto that was no more creamy This confirmed the fact that, indeed, most of the starch that thickens a risotto resides in fine particles on the surface of the rice from the very beginning—stirring and jostling have little to with its release Even cooking is the only reason to stir risotto, and this fact handily provides us with the perfect solution for getting great toasted flavor in addition to perfect creaminess: simply remove the starch before toasting, then add it back before hydrating  ... I had before (see here) What I ended up with was risotto with very little creaminess at all Cooking a second batch of rinsed rice according to the traditional method of stirring the entire time... was no more creamy This confirmed the fact that, indeed, most of the starch that thickens a risotto resides in fine particles on the surface of the rice from the very beginning—stirring and jostling...Reserving the excess starch before toasting I ran my rice grains under a cold tap in a metal strainer, rubbing them and watching as a starchy, milky white liquid collected underneath I then cooked them