Friday, May 18, 2012

Horchata!

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It’s rice week on Reddit’s 52 Weeks of Cooking, and I could have totally taken some more intrinsic routes, given my +2 to making Vietnamese rice dishes as a Vietnamese person.

Over the course of my life, it was very common to have rice twice a day, or maybe even three times a day, with a breakfast of fried rice from last night’s leftovers. Not to mention the uses of glutinous rice as well in desserts, celebratory dishes and so on.

It also usually involves a contraption like this. Asian people don’t need to know how to cook rice, since we have these fabulous machines to do it for us!

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But when it comes to cooking I try to avoid the road more traveled, at least with cooking challenges. So I opted to take the rice I had on hand (from the traditional 50 pound bag most Asian households have) and made Horchata! Very glad I did too, it is super easy and delicious. Unfortunately she was not around, and was very jealous.

 

I just used the extremely popular Lola’s Horchata recipe that comes up fifth in my google search, and avoided that other 2 star one that shows up way before. What’s up with that anyway?

First of all, a cup of rice, uncooked. Using a clear liquid measure for photography purposes here, but you’d usually go with a dry measuring cup for better levelling. Asians, please note that our plastic measuring cup that goes with rice does not equal the regular measuring cup!

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Rinse in several changes of water.

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Until it becomes (relatively) clear.

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Place into your blender with five cups of water.

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Then blend for one minute on high. This was after one minute on medium, so I put it back for a bit more on high speed after I told myself to stop being a wimp.

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It’s handy to have a lipped mixing bowl so you can pour the liquid back in to ensure you get all of the rice out of your container, and have your water rice mix together.

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Then you leave it out at room temperature for at least three hours. For what it is worth, I left mine out overnight.

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When you’re done waiting, strain your liquid. The rice is discarded, but I actually think that you can use the leavings to make congee, or cháo as we call it.

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So now we are left with this rice infused water. We’ll need to add some things to dress it up of course.

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Milk, vanilla, sugar and cinnamon. I probably could have used this recipe for the five ingredients week now that I think about it.

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Two thirds of a cup of sugar, half a tablespoon of cinnamon, half a cup of milk, and half a tablespoon of vanilla extract…

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Are combined with the rice liquid and stirred together vigorously.

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When you can stand to stir no more, put it into your serving container and shake it like an outdated picture taking medium.

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Chill, then serve over crushed ice as needed, more if you prefer things less sweet.

Mmmm, Horchata!

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2 comments:

  1. A similar recipe you may enjoy: Breakfast Rice (quite similar)

    You'll have to forgive me, it's normally all measured by taste

    Cook some rice and fill up a regular sized bowl (to the level that you would fill it up if you were putting cereal in it)

    Add moderate amount of butter (possibly around 1/4 cup butter to 2 cups cooked rice, maybe more, maybe less)

    Mix it up so the butter melts

    Add milk (cold or warm) to the rice until it's covered with milk

    Mix in a lot of sugar (about as much sugar as butter)

    Enjoy



    There should be enough butter that the milk surface will have yellow on it. You could add vanilla and cinnamon (though I have never tried that before), and raisins are a good possibility, maybe even put in while the rice is cooking.



    It's been several years since I've made this (because I don't have a rice cooker and I can't make even instant rice) but my father used to make it occasionally for breakfast and it was always quite delicious.

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    1. Hey Brent, thanks for the comment! That sounds really interesting and definitely something I would have never thought to do. I shall have to give it a try!

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