While I grew up cooking both Indian specifically and Asian food in general, I'd never done black rice at home. Perhaps because I've tried almost every other variety known to man and found they generally don't live up to the hype, because they're all just... rice, really; Oryza sativa, that ancient friend. An exception to this blanket dictum is a good montane basmati, which is truly distinct in both flavour and texture from your long/medium-grain standard commercial varieties.
Today I'm using an organic Thai black rice. Some black rice is glutinous but I did not find this one particularly sticky even though I overcooked it, so I'm assuming it was one of the less gluggy varieties. I don't personally consume much cereal any more; when we do, we eat wholegrain (non-hulled or brown) out of a (probably half-superstitious) belief that less processed = better. According to Wikipedia, black rice is fucking loaded with anthocyanin, iron and vitamin E, however the page sort of reads like something issued by the Black Rice Hurrah Ambitious Growers Association, so my critical faculties are toning that shit down by half. Whatever. If you're going to eat rice, black wholegrain is probably the way to go.
Whole rice of all persuasions is the shitty and distracted cook's friend, retaining an acceptable texture waaaay beyond the point when white rice collapses into blown-out pasty mush because you forgot about it in your narcissistic self-absorption. I soaked this rice overnight as per recommendations and found it fast-cooking and tender, to the point where a wholegrainphobe would possibly overlook the fact that they were actually consuming fibre and nutrients. It's also very beautiful, retaining all those inky ochre copper eggplant tones through the cooking process and lending even boring bumfuck not-again dishes its undisputed aesthetic advantages.
I can report that all that rhapsodical flavour hyperbole around black rice is exactly that- confabulated hipster bullshit. It's not going to take your tongue on a magic carpet ride as-is so forget any notions of lingual psychedelia. It just tastes like a mild high-quality brown, with maybe a five-percent swing toward bland, slightly smoky sweetness á la basmati, rather than hitting you with those hard, grassy notes sometimes present in coarser wholegrain varieties. But this laid-back, neither/nor aspect is what makes it such an eminent vehicle for other flavours; it really did come out swinging as a fantastic absorber and projector of condiments and sauces.
Today I'm using an organic Thai black rice. Some black rice is glutinous but I did not find this one particularly sticky even though I overcooked it, so I'm assuming it was one of the less gluggy varieties. I don't personally consume much cereal any more; when we do, we eat wholegrain (non-hulled or brown) out of a (probably half-superstitious) belief that less processed = better. According to Wikipedia, black rice is fucking loaded with anthocyanin, iron and vitamin E, however the page sort of reads like something issued by the Black Rice Hurrah Ambitious Growers Association, so my critical faculties are toning that shit down by half. Whatever. If you're going to eat rice, black wholegrain is probably the way to go.
Whole rice of all persuasions is the shitty and distracted cook's friend, retaining an acceptable texture waaaay beyond the point when white rice collapses into blown-out pasty mush because you forgot about it in your narcissistic self-absorption. I soaked this rice overnight as per recommendations and found it fast-cooking and tender, to the point where a wholegrainphobe would possibly overlook the fact that they were actually consuming fibre and nutrients. It's also very beautiful, retaining all those inky ochre copper eggplant tones through the cooking process and lending even boring bumfuck not-again dishes its undisputed aesthetic advantages.
I can report that all that rhapsodical flavour hyperbole around black rice is exactly that- confabulated hipster bullshit. It's not going to take your tongue on a magic carpet ride as-is so forget any notions of lingual psychedelia. It just tastes like a mild high-quality brown, with maybe a five-percent swing toward bland, slightly smoky sweetness á la basmati, rather than hitting you with those hard, grassy notes sometimes present in coarser wholegrain varieties. But this laid-back, neither/nor aspect is what makes it such an eminent vehicle for other flavours; it really did come out swinging as a fantastic absorber and projector of condiments and sauces.
 | Okay! Let's cook this shit. R's making toasties in the background but I want to do it now so just ignore him. I bought half a kilo of organic black rice and that cost me $6-something NZ dollars, which is stupidly expensive. What are you going to do- grow it yourself?  |
Here's what the raw grains look like- phoenix food is the first thing that came to mind. I'm going to soak a standard cup of the dry grain in cold water overnight, which I'll put in the fridge because it's summer, I'm not making beer and food poisoning's bad, mmmokay?
| Soaking isn't absolutely necessary. I have a dodgy gut for grains and find it improves digestibility. I add about triple the dry volume's worth of water to anything I'm soaking and that's always worked well across the board.  |  |
Halfway through the next day I yoink it out of the fridge. It's swelled a wee bit but not as impressively as something like chickpeas. Rinsed, into a pan with the obligatory three xs cold water, no salt (salt can make some rices swell and burst so I generally abstain), covered and brought to the boil. Five minutes of this + another twenty or so of quiet simmering got me cloudy purple water and a very slightly overcooked result. Compare the cooked grains to the raw ones in my palm below right.
 The rice blew up to around triple the original 1 cup volume; this impressed me and took some of the sting out of the price per kilo. It also drained and dried out well in the sieve without glueing itself into a hard lump. I put it back in the fridge for tomorrow. |  |
 Lunch is a free range peppered pork steak, asparagus and my patented WTF fried rice which is a shredded Chinese omelette and whatever vegetables and sauces haunt the fridge (today cauliflower, mushrooms, spring onion, and fucking tomato which is not a match for Hoisin sauce so don't ever do that). |  |
The original one cup made enough for four people in the context of this meal, but R eats for two and I held some back for another dish so it worked out well. The black rice stayed structurally intact, didn't stick to the frying pan and certainly broadcast all those flavours nicely; it did amplify the sweetness of the sauce so perhaps keep that in mind. You can make a shitload of different sweet dishes and puddings with this lovely grain so have a look for them online. I know I will be.
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