Better Dinners?

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Most of you have never had the opportunity to share my dinner table. (I’m sorry I missed you.)  No longer having an active R&D lab at my personal disposal, I rely upon my kitchen to satisfy my chemical exploits.  My background (both technical training and business experiences) has afforded me the ability to be an outstanding cook.  (Yes, I am being modest smileyface.)

And, for those who have been at my table, they know that rice and sweet potatoes will generally be on the menu.  Every single time.

Sweet potato fries, curried sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes with honey (called tzimmes), even a plain baked sweet potato.

The rice is mixed with orange juice, apple juice, vegetables, tomatoes and jalapenos, black beans- or even a combination- or devoid of any augmentation.  My rice of choice is Bhasmati or Jasmine (both the brown varieties).   Which brings up an important fact- these rice choices means you should soak the rice for at least ten minutes and then pour off the water.  (I also then rinse the rice in a colander for about a minute.)  Because that cuts the starch component dramatically.  And, it’s 2.25 to 2.75 cups of water per cup of rice, not the wimpy conventional dose of 1 or 2 cups of water per cup of rice.  (Use the original measurement of rice you prepared- before you decanted the starch laden water away.)

As you can tell, we certainly don’t need that starch.  If you don’t decant the starch-laden water, you can expect your cup of cooked rice to contain around 200 calories, with the bulk of those calories from the starch.  You can cut the starch from 45 down to 20 grams just by the 10 minute soak.

(Note:  You should recognize that I am not using American rice varieties.  Which are all vitamin-enhanced by law.  If you do use American rice, recognize that soaking that rice removes the vitamins that coat the rice.)

But, Dr. Pushparajah Thavarajah and his student, Sudhair James, introduced a new concept to cooking rice at the recent American Chemical Society meeting (249th National Meeting, Denver, Colorado).   They presented results demonstrating they could cut the caloric count by half- and augment the other nutritional aspects of rice.   (Just so you know, Dr. Thavarajah has been looking at ways to improve our ability to obtain more nutrients from lentils for several years now.)

Instead of just heating the water and rice combo, they add coconut oil once the water begins boiling.  (They also don’t soak their rice!)  How much?  3% of the weight of the uncooked rice.   That works out to be about 6 grams of coconut oil per cup of rice- which works out to be about 7 ml or ¼ ounce (by volume).   Oh, and they then refrigerate the rice overnight (12 h) before eating it.   (Yes, you reheat the rice before eating it, silly!)

This process means that the starch- instead of becoming glucose or glycogen (stored fats) in our body- has been pre-converted to other compounds.  Coconut oil is a lipid (all organic oils are) and when heated in the presence of the digestible starch converts that starch to a waxy version (i.e., non-digestible starch).   Which means the rice is consumed by our bodies and the starch passes through without further processing by our bodies.

Their next research steps?  To see if other oils, ones more prevalent in the US- like sunflower oil- yield the same or better results.

In the meantime, you can get coconut oil at most grocery stores and a few drug stores.

Happy eating!

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