But I do try to limit what I call “pointless carbs.” White bread, refined sugar, Twinkies. That sort of thing.
And I run into a problem when it comes to rice and pasta.
On the other hand, I think brown rice and whole-wheat pasta taste like peat moss.
So a few years ago, Ingrid and I went to a restaurant with a wonderfully elegant solution to this problem. (The Big Sky Cafe in San Luis Obispo, if you want to know.)
They had mixed brown and white rice.
And ever since then, that’s how I’ve been making rice. Pasta, too. Half brown, half white.
I realize that plain brown rice and plain whole wheat pasta would probably be better for me. But I don’t like them, and I’m not going to eat them, and it’s not better for me if I don’t eat them. Mixing is a good compromise. The harm reduction model of healthy eating.
Example: If your whole-wheat pasta takes 12 minutes and your white pasta takes 10, just start cooking the whole wheat pasta, and put in the white pasta 2 minutes later.
Or for rice: If your brown rice takes 40 minutes and your white rice takes 20, start cooking the brown rice, and add the white rice 20 minutes later. Be sure to start with the right amount of water for both. (I know, your mother told you never to remove the lid when you’re cooking rice; but really, nothing terrible will happen if you just do it once.)
Anyway. This works really well for us, and I thought I’d pass it along. If you try it, let me know how it goes.
I do the same thing with mashed potatoes – a 50/50 mix of russets and sweet potatoes or yams. I figure that I’m at least getting a wider range of vitamins, and also since the sweet potatoes can be a little slimey, the whole mash requires a little less butter/cream to get good texture.
Brown rice takes 40 minutes? Wow, that’s a crazy-long amount of time by my plain old white rice standards.
Btw, I second your “peat moss” comment. Brown just doesn’t taste right by itself.
This is frelling brilliant — and so simple and obvious now that it’s been pointed out. My impression of brown rice was identical to yours, but I have felt guilty for eating the white instead of the brown — so I’ll try combining them and see how it goes. Thanks loads for the tip!
~David D.G.
A perfectly reasonable trick! I’ve also baked bread with half white half wheat flour, which gives some vitamins etc. without the rising problems of a whole-wheat bread.
That’s a good idea, Greta! I’ll have to talk to the wife about it. ‘Course, our problem with brown rice is the cooking time, not the flavor. But mixing pastas might work well for us.
Say, Sony, just for trivia’s sake, what’s sold in supermarkets here are actually yellow sweet potatoes, not really yams at all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potatoes).
Hey Leon, I actually knew that, which is why I mentioned both and said “or” – I subscribe to a farm and get both in my boxes-o-veggies. 🙂
Well, I’ll be. Silly me assuming someone on this blog probably wouldn’t know that! Seems I should have known better! 🙂
Pasta and rice and bread are not pure carbohydrate. They are not “empty calories”, whether white or wholemeal.
If you’re getting adequate levels of fibre and some of the other nutrients lost in processing out some of the fibre, you may even be better off with “white”.
They do, for example, contain protein, generally in a higher concentration. With wholemeal bread, it is often the case that it has higher GI than white bread.
This is not to scare you off the wholemeal alternatives – there’s much to be said for them. But the processed foods are not “empty”. They are not “bad”. Your diet as a whole that needs to cover all the bases. If you eat a lot of white rice, give some extra thought to things like fibre and the various B-group vitamins. But don’t feel guilty about eating it.
The best thing is if you can enjoy both. If that happens to be “both at the same time”, like you describe above, I think that’s great.
Try this recipe for baked brown rice: http://tinyurl.com/bqpj6 It tastes much better than boiled rice. 😉
You might also want to try bean pasta (fin3 si1 in Mandarin, not sure what it’s called exactly in English–look for it at an oriental grocery store). It’s basically very fine, clear, white noodles that have no inherent taste and absorb cooking flavors beautifully; and since they’re made of bean flour, they’re healthier.
Not all brown rice is created equal. I’ve been really enjoying “sweet brown rice” that’s a short grain rice with a very yummy flavor. Makes long grain brown rice taste like cardboard.
When my parents took up Zen Buddhism in 1969, the whole brown rice thing was just taking off. Let me tell you, it was torture to a ten-year old to eat brown rice, especially when there was no sugar and milk to pour on it. Oh, the horror!
Fast forward 38 years and now I love it. Plain. With nothing on it. I actually like the taste. Go figure. The secret is to cook it for at least 40 minutes, with a little extra water or broth, so it’s very soft and easy to chew. You still have to chew it, unlike white rice, which you can just gum to death, but the nutty flavor comes through just fine.
Honest.
Now, I can’t say the same for whole wheat pasta at all. Go figure.
Also, different types of white rice have different GIs. Basmati, for instance, has a lower GI than Jasmine rice.
I like your idea though – I might just get over my fear of brown rice that way.
See, now this is why I love your blog: Where else can you get a porn star’s opinion of whole grain pasta?