How to cook Thai rice using rice cooker
How to cook Thai rice without rice cooker
Thai style rice can be classified into 2 categories based on the time of sell after the harvesting. One is the new rice or "Kao Mai" which is the rice that just be harvested and sell, so the grain hold a lot of water in it. When you cook with new rice, the cooked rice will be a little damp. New rice have soft smell of earth and the color is clear white.
The other one is old rice or "Kao Kao". It is the rice that has been sell after a time of harvesting, may be a year. Since the grain was stored for some time, the water in it is less that new rice. When you cook, the cooked rice will be less damp than the new one. Old rice has less aroma and is white-yellow in color. To cook any fried rice, you should used old rice instead on the new one.
In the old time when there is no electicity, traditional Thai style rice cooking used clay pot which give rice earthly aroma. Sometime Thais put some flowers or some leaf that has sweet smell like jasmine or pandan leaves in the cooker after the rice is cooked and close the lid, let the heat of the cooking drive out the aroma. The rice will appetizingly smell good.
We also cook Thai rice with coconut milk instead of water and eat with papaya salad Thai style. This dishes called "Kao Mun Som Tam". I wil post this recipe later.
So now you know how to cook Thai rice. Thank for the people who make this 2 videos!
Lastly, I've read a lot of question on the net if cooked rice can be frozen. The answer is yes but you have to put the rice in a close utensil or wrap it to prevent any freeze from making the rice too dry. If you want to reheat the rice to eat it, just put a little bowl filled with water on top of the rice to make it clammy and microwave it.
Since you know how to cook Thai rice, and if you are a Thai food lover, you should buy a rice cooker. I suggest you buy a good one because you have to use it a lot. The size is depend on you. If you are single, a 1.5 cup rice cooker or a 3 cup rice cooker should satified your need. However, if you have your family, a bigger one should be better. Below I add some links from amazon.com. The 1.5 rice cooker is Panasonic SR-3NA which can cook 1-1/2 cup, suit for any single. Most Review on the net give this 1.5 cooker 4 stars out of 5.
A couple without kids may love a 3 cup rice cooker. There are a lot of supplier for this size in the market and the price range is so high. If you need a plain one you could pick the Zojirushi NHS-06. A cutomer at shopzilla.com review the pros and cons of this Zojirushi NHS-06 as easy to cook and clean, but the price is not least expensive. Some says it does everything that you can expect for little money. Well, it's up to you! Another Zojirushi is the Zojirushi NS-LAC05 which has a higher price but also has micro-computerized fuzzy logic technology. The price at the time I type this post is only $134.57, 24% discout from $177.99 with free shipping.
If you have 1-2 kids, you might like the Zojirushi NS-TGC10 Micom. I pick this model because it's got an 4 and a half star out of five from 160 customer reviews, not just one or two reviews. It has retractable power cord and music indicator of when it starts and ends. If the models are not what you want, feel free to use the amazon searchbox on the right side of this post to navigate through the model you look for. That's all I can tell you about how to cook Thai rice for now. See you next time!
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