How Chefs From Around the World Make Rice

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You are about to see-

10 different chefs-

From 10 different countries-

Make rice. Make rice.

[lively music]

I'm making biryani.

Biryani is a very, very technical and a very intricate dish.

It's basically made with meat, rice, aromatics.

We are using long-grain basmati rice.

The rice has this yellowish hue to it,

which means that the rice has been aged for a while

and it develops an even a nicer aroma.

It is probably the most consumed starch in the country.

So we've had the rice soaking for about 30 minutes.

All the water's been absorbed by the rice.

I have a pot in front of me.

Best ways to build flavor into the rice

is also to perfume the rice,

a bay leaf, dry red chili, cloves,

some cinnamon, one star anise.

We're gonna go with a rice that's cooked about 75% done.

When you layer it with the meat, that's gonna generate steam

and that's gonna complete cooking your rice.

I like to keep a large sheet tray

just to spread the rice out.

And you see how much steam there is.

So if this just sat on top of each other,

the rice would completely overcook.

So the first step

of assembling your biryani is taking your joule.

The joule is basically a mixture of the ghee, the saffron,

and the cream is gonna give your final layer of perfume

to the rice.

It makes sure that your bani doesn't stick

to the bottom 'cause it's got ghee.

If there's any excess moisture,

the clay pot's gonna absorb all of that up.

And then my meat, the layers are what make it biryani

'cause when it cooks, all those layers come together.

I have dough, you're gonna create a seal.

As this cooks,

there's gonna be a lot of steam that's generated.

The dough is gonna trap that steam inside.

Traditionally this was put over an open flame.

You would put a plate

and then you would put this on it

so that the heat would go bottom upwards.

A really nice way of cooking

this also is also just putting it in the oven.

Now it's showtime, the biryani is ready.

I can literally look at each and every grain of rice

and I can tell that it's not clumped up.

Traditionally, I would just eat it with my hands

and that's what I'm gonna do right now.

It's gonna take some of that meat,

some of that yogurt, exactly what it should be like.

Rice is not clumped up.

It's taking the flavor from the ginger,

the mint, the cilantro,

the saffrons perfume the rice perfectly.

That's it, that's biryani.

Today I will be making Tai Chazuke, rice with tea.

Every single one of prefecture has their own version

and also a kind of different style of ochazuke.

Today I'm going to make a cold version.

So this is Japanese short grain rice, sweet, it's subtle,

it doesn't affect any other flavors,

but it compliments other things.

So rice is rinsed and it's ready to cook.

I'm gonna put it in this clay pot called donabe.

It's a very traditional method, make sure it's level.

And put your finger in and the water goes up to here,

on the first joint is like usually good measurement.

You wanna make better quality rice

you can put kombu, which is a kelp,

and it cooks it with kombu zamami coming into the rice

and it gets a little bit more shinier.

And you just put the lid on

and start with the maximum fire first.

Nowadays there's a lot of electric rice cooker.

They cook really great rice.

But one thing that they can't do,

and this does, is to make a okoge,

which is the bottom crispy part.

That's what makes this rice a little bit more elevated.

So once it comes up to a boil,

you bring it down the heat to the lowest,

let it be for about 15 to 20 minutes

and turn off the heat

and let it steam for about another 10 minutes.

And your rice should be done.

The rice looks very sharp

and each grains are not stinking together.

Slight brown color, I was looking for,

this rice spatula is called shamoji,

just like a rounder shape, it's good shape.

You can grab rice without breaking the grain of a rice.

Now this one is shio kombu, snapper on top.

And this is tama miso.

This is dashi stock with Gyokuro tea.

It's a Japanese green tea.

This one I made with a cold brew style.

There you have a ochazuke, Tai Chazukes.

[Shintaro slurping] [soft Japanese music]

[speaking foreign language]

It's really good.

Today I'm making a risotto, like creamy,

the grains are not separate to each other.

Risotto is typical from the northern of Italy.

So for today we are using carnaroli rice.

You can use Arborio rice, you can use Roma rice.

The way that I prefer to do it is dry-toasting it.

The salt we just gonna add right now.

So the goal for toasting the rice is

because when we're gonna add the liquid,

all the starches from the rice are just gonna come out.

Risotto needs that starch

to make the creaminess when we add the stock.

So carnaroli is a little thicker.

So when you stir it, it doesn't break.

When you use like long grains,

what you wanna have is like touch it less as possible

otherwise it's gonna break.

So the saffron is for flavor, also for color,

it is a lot of saffron, but you know,

we want it to be yellow, just a little more saffron.

So I turn off the heat because now I wanna add the fats

and I don't want the fats to break.

Just don't judge me when I'm doing this

because it's gonna be a lot of butter.

Parmigiano cheese, the secret of delicious stuff

is a lot of butter and cheese.

So what I made it here is that the sour butter.

So it's a reduction of the white wine vinegar

and butter and some black pepper.

When you eat something, it is very heavy,

you eat one, two, three spoon,

then you're like, Okay, that's it,

but when you add the sour part,

then you just wanna have more.

This is why it is called all'onda, means the wave.

So you wanna see the wave because that's the texture.

And you wanna hear that sound.

[risotto slapping] [soft gentle music]

And we're gonna let rest this one.

And the creaminess, you can see each singular grain

and now you just wanna pat it up.

All right, so our dish of risotto is ready.

You see, it's creamy, it's al dente.

Mm, I just love risotto so much.

We are making Yangzhou fried rice.

It has its root in the city of Yangzhou,

the birthplace of Yangzhou cuisine.

The earliest documentary version dates back 1,500 years

with a beautiful name, rice with gold pieces.

You want to use like day-old or leftover rice

because it has less moisture.

So when frying

and tossed with other ingredients, each grain will separate.

I am going to add chicken, bamboo,

some Chinese ham, sea cucumber, dried scallops rehydrated,

shiitake mushrooms and some shrimp,

rice wine, and then rice.

And quickly separate the rice.

And I wanna add eggs.

By tossing the rice in the hot wok,

it also remove the excessive moisture.

It's a quick cooking

so you want to make sure that you have room like a wok

to be able to toss everything very quickly

'cause the longer you let the rice cook,

the moisture will go into rice

and will make the rices super wet again.

You don't want the amount

of all the ingredients more than the rice

'cause the rice is the star.

The rice is done,

so you can see all the ingredients are mixed perfectly well.

It looks dry, but it's actually very moist from the fat

from all the ingredients.

And also the rice are individually separated.

It's soft, but you still feel a little bit of the chew

and then the slight bounciness.

So today we're gonna make a rice pilaf.

It's a French typical recipe.

We don't see a lot of dishes with rice in France

because of the climate.

It only grow in the Camargue regions, Southeast France.

But the version of rice we have here,

it's long-grain because it's keeps separate more.

Saute the rice first,

this way, you create that crust around each grain,

make the rice stays separately.

The goal is to get the flavor of the garlic, the onion,

and the butter to the rice.

It's kind of oily and that's what you want.

Then you get that crust around each grain,

broth, season your rice,

and salt, fresh bay leaf, you could use a leaf

but it's better with a parchment paper,

doesn't keep the steam too much inside.

This way you got a perfectly separate rice.

As soon as it is boiled,

we are gonna finish cooking it in the oven.

[oven door clacks] [screen whooshes]

It is being 17 minutes. It's perfect.

There is no water in the bottom of the rice

and that the rice is separately.

So we are using a carving fork to mix rice,

this way we are not gonna break our rice

and we are not gonna make it mushy or stick together.

We wanna add a little butter for the flavor,

but also to help the grain to separate a little bit more.

So this is my rice pilaf.

You can see the grain is very separate,

got a good taste too, little firmness,

it's perfect like that.

So the dish, it's called the Roz Mfaouer,

Mfaouer mean steam.

So the rice will be steamed with some chicken

and a lot of spices.

We do find this dish in Algeria,

mostly like in the wedding we make that rice.

It's like a luxury chow, like chicken, rice,

saffron, especially saffron it's really expensive.

So we are using a long-grain basmati rice.

It's very important to soak the rice

at least three times just to remove the starch

and it doesn't stick as much.

So we are going to be using the couscoussier,

it's very old school.

So in the bottom we will have the broth.

Steam will go up, will flavor the rice.

So I'm adding vegetable oil, the chicken, onion, carrot,

the secret spice, the tomato paste,

some thyme, bay leaves, chicken broth, the peas.

[water whooshing]

It looks like it's actually steaming right now

so I am going to put the rice over it.

I always like to add some broth over the rice.

It smells already really good.

So it's been about 20 minutes

and it looks really good to me.

So I'm gonna flip the plate, all right, one, two, three.

[rice softly thunks] [soft jazzy music]

Ah, va-voila, [laughing] I know I messed it up,

but it's the charm of having traditional food

where nothing is perfect.

Looks fantastic for me.

Oh la-la! So good.

I'm going to cook Ris a la Malta.

It's a dessert that we make from rice porridge.

Rice is not a very common grain in Sweden.

We don't grow rice ourselves.

So of course, bringing it in in the early 1700,

it's a luxury item.

So what we are starting with is to make the rice porridge.

We use short-grain rice, soak it just for a few minutes

to get a little bit of the starchiness out.

You strain off all the water.

And then I like to use half part of water, milk,

and then we flavor it

with whole cinnamon stick, sugar,

a little bit of salt brings up all the flavors

and everything is better with butter.

And now you cook it on medium.

The way you stir it, it becomes creamier, perfect.

So we put it in a bowl.

Here is the chilled rice porridge.

Take the cinnamon stick. We don't need that anymore.

I whipped some heavy cream with vanilla beans

and a little bit of vanilla extract.

And the rice is absorbing some of the heavy cream.

You want the kind of creamy texture to it.

Then we are going to garnish with some fresh clementine,

black currant syrup or sauce.

Okay, here we go, Ris a la Malta.

Mm, the rice is cooked perfectly, nice and soft.

You will like it.

Today we are making chicken rice.

Rice pilav is all around Turkey, especially on the street.

We're using bulgur rice, or Osmanji.

It is a medium-grain rice,

a little more starchy than Basmati.

In Turkey, pilav is cooked with orzo,

which is actually a wheat product.

I'm using orzo made of rye.

In Turkey I have never seen rice without orzo.

Okay, now I'm gonna add butter, rice now.

This rice is washed.

In Turkey we do not cook the rice al dente.

It should be thoroughly cooked, but it shouldn't be sticky.

The goal is to keep the pieces separate.

Toast this rice until it's kind of translucent.

Now I'm adding the chicken broth. This broth is warm.

Put these chicken pieces, we're gonna wait about 20 minutes

for it to cook in as low heat as possible.

The rice is almost ready.

I'm gonna add chickpeas to this

because I have never had chicken rice on the street

without chickpeas.

If the bottom gets a little sticky and brown,

that's actually very good.

That's probably gonna be the most delicious part.

It's very common in the household

to eat the rice with yogurt.

Yogurt gives a really nice little acidity

and a little freshness.

It's such a savory flavor. It's so good.

My mama would be proud.

The quintessential American rice dish for me

is rice and gravy.

I think in the US you're going to first find rice

and gravy to be in the south.

It has worked its way up to the north

because there are multiple soul food restaurants.

The rice is supposed to be tiny bit tender,

have a little bit of that kind of like bite to it.

So I like to use the long-grain parboiled rice.

Oftentimes you need to rinse the rice off

because it can get very sticky.

With parboiled, you don't have to do that,

it's literally dump it in the pot.

I like to take my garlic clove

and stick it right inside the water

and that will infuse into the rice.

Okay, so now my grandmother told me,

you do not mess with rice.

Okay, do not play with it. You let it do its thing.

Now our rice is finished.

You see how it's like separating and fluffy and tender

and I'll just like try a little bit.

Mm! Ooh the garlic is nice in there.

While the rice was cooking up,

I made sure that I took care of my gravy.

The parts of my gravy are chicken broth, fresh thyme,

fresh rosemary.

Sometimes I wanna throw the parsley in there

just because it makes look pretty.

That rice is definitely the star of the show.

Just in texture alone,

it is making sure that it holds everything together.

Not bad, Shaw-nae. [gentle music]

So today I'm making a rice dish

called Ye Timatim Roz, which is an Ethiopian word,

it means tomato rice, spicy, very flavorful,

and has a lot of juiciness to it.

Rice is really not that common in Ethiopia

because we're very proud of our teff.

You know, it's home to Ethiopia

and that's the reason we make a bread called injera.

Injera is our staple. We eat everything with injera.

It's our utensils, our rice, our bread.

So we're gonna throw in a little bit of oil,

and then a little bit of the diced onion, diced tomato.

I'm gonna add berbere.

Berbere is an Ethiopian spice

consisting of 30 different spices.

Every household makes it different.

I like to save time

and then get a pre-washed, long-grain of rice

so that I can saute with the rest of the stuff

so that it takes all that flavor.

And then later I'm gonna add some water.

Once the water absorbs, the rice is ready.

Before it's fully cooked I'm gonna add diced carrots

and the peas, so our Ye Roz Timatim is ready.

The rice took in all the flavors from all the spices.

It's a little al dente.

Honestly, it's so good, guys, try it.

I nailed it.

That is delicious.

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