Cooking Black rice/ Purple rice/ Forbidden rice

Hello Dear Reader, I am back with a post. My today’s post is dedicated to Rice, our staple & all the rice eaters over here like I do. Recent years, we have seen so many discussions/ arguments for and against rice and eating rice. Being a rice lover & hard core rice eater I always think eating rice in moderate level is always good. It is our local food & our elders followed rice based diet all these years. Having said so, I always like to try healthy variants of rice like brown rice over white rice. Similarly now after hearing about this black rice in social media, I tried it too.

Now, what is this black or purple rice all about.  Black rice, also known as forbidden rice is a range of rice variety. There are number of different varieties grown & used in different Asian countries. Some of them are Thai Jasmine black rice, Philippine heirloom black rice … It is called as Chak hao in Manipur, India.  It is also called as forbidden rice because of its availability to the royal families only in ancient times.

This rice is nutritionally rich, some varieties are glutinous too. It is sticky compared to the regular white or brown rice & has mild nutty flavour. In fact, it is as sticky as sabakki/ sabudana but tastes differentThis rice takes more time & effort to cook. It is recommended to soak this rice in water before cooking as these speeds up the process of cooking. It is suitable for preparing dessert like pudding/ kheer, porridge or even some kind of rice cakes.

I am sharing the method of cooking this rice in today’s post in pressure cooker. You can serve the sticky black rice with salads, grated coconut or with regular side dishes.

Preparation time: 1 hour (soaking)

Cooking time: 20 minutes

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

Black rice – ½ cup

Water – 2 cups

 

Method:

• Wash rice, & soak in water for an hour.
• After 1 hour, drain soaked water and add the soaked rice in a pressure cooker.
• Add 2 cups of water and cook the rice for 3-4 whistles.
• When pressure settles down, open the lid. If you feel it is dry add a glass of water & bring to a boil.
• Serve rice with choice of side dish/ salad. Add salt to taste while serving too.
• You can use this cooked rice in making other dishes like payasa/ kheer.
• It is healthy; tell me how you liked it after trying out. Everyone may not find it tasty; still it is worth trying to experience unique flavored & colored rice.