I didn’t mean to do a smackdown, but wanted to make a curry, and discovered that I only had about 1/2 cup of long grain rice, which is my favourite. (#1)

I have most of a 10 pound bag of sticky (aka sweet or glutinous) rice, which isn’t my favourite. There are a number of ways of cooking it, but I like it best steamed. (#2)

I went to 7-11, mostly to stock up on these:

(and a little treat):

The only rice they had was this, which I haven’t made before:

#1 I did what I usually do, rinsed the rice, added water to a 2:1 ratio, brought it to the boil, covered the pot, cooked it under the lowest heat possible for 20 minutes, then removed it from the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes.

#2 was rinsed and left to soak for four hours (the minimum time if you’re going to steam it), then steamed until done but not too sticky (unsurprisingly, it gets stickier the more you cook it.)

#3 I treated just like long-grain, went to wash it in the pot . . . and it floated!

Then I read the directions. Boil the water, add the rice, stir, then remove from the heat and cover.

I put the rice into a strainer, then followed the directions:

Here they are, from left to right, long-grain, sticky, Minute:

They don’t look that different, do they? But what differences!

The long grain was perfect, each grain separable and with a consistent slightly chewy “al dente” texture. The sticky rice had about the the same texture, but unsurprisingly the grains stuck together much more than the long grain.

I had high hopes for the Minute rice. After all, it’s just rice . . . you can’t f*ck it up that much, right? But this was really, really bad. Granted, rice is pretty bland, but it does have *some* flavor. The Minute rice was completely flavorless. Far worse is that it was an odd mix of mushiness and nasty hard bits, even in the same grain. Maybe this is due to my mis-cooking (or unconscious food snobbery), but I’d almost rather go hungry than eat this.

-R