Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local
“Rice is great if you’re hungry and want 2000 of something.”
This quip from a comedian is printed in one of the cookbooks on my shelf, and it has printed itself in my brain as well. It’s not like screamingly hilarious, but I guess it’s just the right amount of funny.
This caused me to wonder if 2000 was also just the right amount of “rices.” Apparently I am not the first one to be curious about how many grains of rice are in a cup, and thanks to the internet I don’t even have to do my own computations. If I wanted to watch a youtube video of someone else counting individual grains of rice, I could do that — or at least that’s what it looks like, but I didn’t watch, because I have over 2000 better things to do with my time.
Fortunately some people were really smart and went with basic math instead. They took the weight of either a grain of rice in milligrams, or how many grains of rice were in a gram, and calculated it out from there. Thus, an approximate value of a cup of dry rice is around 8500 grains, and so 2000 would be slightly under one-fourth cup; rice increases in volume by about 2 ½ times when cooked, so that equals a strong half-cup of cooked rice.
So okay, you can’t be starving, but if you’re moderately hungry and have plenty of other food to put on it, then 2000 grains is great.
This comes with a few disclaimers. As with many foods and like I discussed with lettuce a few weeks ago, we often oversimplify culinary categories. Rice is rice, yes, but also: short grain, long grain, jasmine, basmati, brown in any of those types, arborio, carolina gold, etc. Types all share similarities, of course, but also have their own inherent distinctions in texture and flavor — plus also are often more common in different regions, so are frequently more associated with particular usages and cooking styles. Since rice is eaten all over the globe, there is literally a worldful of possibilities.
That also means there is a planet of things I could talk about in regards to rice. Considering it’s J week, though, my choice for jasmine rice is obvious.
My other disclaimer is that even if I were hungry for 2000 of something, it wouldn’t be rice. I could probably handle that many popcorns? I tend to get bored with actually eating rice itself, although I love making it, since it is so globally versatile and I tend to love the foods that are paired with it, from South American to African to Asian.
Jasmine rice, with its long grain and fragrant aroma, was developed in Thailand in the 1950s and remains the rice of choice in much of Southeast Asia. Its name is because the white rice grains reminded people of the white petals of jasmine flowers; even just cooked plain, it tends to have more “rice-y” flavor, and the texture is very appealing — a little sticky and chewy, with a distinct aroma. I was struck by how much it smelled like popcorn when I was cooking it, before knowing that that is what everyone else also says it smells like.
Rice that smells like popcorn…that means jasmine rice might be the right thing after for when I’m hungry for a couple thousand of something.
