Here's a trick when you need inspiration in your cooking-for-one routine — especially when you arrive home in the evenings and heating a pizza seems like the most expedient way to get some dinner into your belly. For about the same amount of time it would take for your oven to preheat and that frozen pizza to bake, you can put together a healthy, vegetable-intense dinner that tastes delicious and fills you up. What's the secret? Cook a pot of rice on Sunday night and use it throughout the week.
Of course, this works for dinner for two and families, too, but I find having some cooked rice in the refrigerator really helps me to eat a healthier meal when I'm cooking solo, especially if I'm alone for the whole work week. I eat brown rice because I love brown rice, but of course white rice is good, too.
Faith just put up a fantastic post on making rice so until you have it down, bookmark this page for quick reference. You can also use a rice cooker. Depending on what kind of rice you are making, one cup uncooked rice will yield about three to four cups of cooked rice. So for a work week's worth of single cooking, I start with three cups of uncooked rice. I knock it down to two if I know I will be eating several meals out that week.
This page from the USA Rice Federation offers lots of information about cooking rice. One helpful tip I got from them is that one pound of uncooked rice equals approximately two cups uncooked or six cups cooked. Since I often buy my rice in bulk, this equation comes in handy.
The trick with having a big pot of rice in your refrigerator is to not get too bored with it. ("Rice again?") If you grew up eating rice at every meal like many Asians do, this may not be a problem. But if you're not used to eating rice, then you want to be sure you're using it an a variety of ways. Here are some excellent dishes from The Kitchn archives that can be made with leftover rice.
For Brown Rice:
• Five Ways to Eat Brown Rice
• Brown Rice Bowl with Lemongrass, Tofu and Cashews
• Massa Brown RIce Bowl
• Rice and Mixed Greens Salad with Dates, Cashews, and Chickpeas
• Make Rice and Seaweed Rolls
• Fried Brown Rice with Ginger and Scallions
For White Rice:
• Five Ideas for Leftover Rice
• Cheesy Tex-Mex Rice (serve with chicken or tofu as a main dish)
• Miso Soup with Rice and Poached Egg
• Filipino Style Rice'n'Eggs
Either White or Brown:
• Quick and Easy Fried Rice
• Lemony Spring Soup with Rice and Peas
• Na Lee's Light Fried Rice
Other ways to use leftover rice: Add it to soups, whip to into a frittata, make it into a salad by tossing it with finely chopped fresh vegetables and a vinaigrette. For a nice dessert, simmer rice in milk with some sugar and cinnamon until thick for a quick rice pudding.
The Basics:
• How to Cook Rice Like Pasta
• How to Reheat Rice
• Do you Wash Your Rice Before Cooking?
• How Do I Add Rice to Soup?
What are the ways you like to use leftover rice?
(Images: Faith Durand and Emma Christensen)
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I do this all the time for myself and my finance. But we don't just stop at rice ... I'll make millet, quinoa, couscous, barley, wheatberries, etc, in the pressure cooker on sunday. For lunches, we just toss whatever veggies/spices/sauces we feel like eating that day on top. It's super quick and healthy, since we try to stick to whole grains. And filling! We don't usually eat this for dinner, though--for lunch, it seems less annoying to have a similar thing every day.
I read recently that leftover rice is only good for a couple of days, even if refrigerated, due to spores present in the rice that could give you food poisoning. I've never had a problem using leftover rice, but does anyone know how true this is?
The fastest and most comforting dinner (and lunch) for me has always been cooked rice with a fried egg. Season with soy sauce. Takes about 5 minutes (if you already have the rice cooked).
How do you keep if from drying out? Whenever I refrigerate and reheat rice, it dries out and becomes awful little pellets.
Rice really doesn't take that long to make, especially with a rice cooker. I'd rather make it fresh than have to revive dried out rice. Quinoa, on the other hand . . .
If you don't want your leftover rice to be a big hard rock then you should probably use medium to short grain rice, which has less amylose (the thing that makes rice get hard when it's in the fridge).
HeatherHLR, I have the same problem. I made a whole rice-cooker of white rice the other day; it was fluffy and cooked to perfection on day 1, dry and horrid when reheated on day 2.
I'd be happy to eat rice every day - I lived in Indonesia for a while, and rice 3x a day, every day, was standard. They made it fresh each day (and usually each meal), though.
@TheRascalQueen: I live by myself, and my rice cooker (which was the smallest one I could find at the time), cooks a minimum 2 cups raw rice at a time (= 6 cups cooked rice). So I'm stuck eating it for a few days, unfortunately.
Maybe it needs to be reheated with a little water added, so it steams slightly?
The best thing to do with Japanese rice to preserve it through the week is to compress it into a ball or onigiri (triangular) shape, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, and store it in the freezer. It microwaves nicely.
I'd never be able to keep rice in the refrigerator for a whole week without having it spoil or get moldy. One or two days is the limit.
I thought you weren't supposed to keep and reheat rice. I mean, I do .. looks like we all do. But isn't there some food safety issue involved?
Something I've done with leftover rice is to use it in tians, the recipe for which I got from Judith Jones' PLEASURES OF COOKING FOR ONE -- saute a couple handfuls of spinach, then dump a scant cup of cooked rice into the pan and mix it all up with a pat of butter. Then put all that into an earthenware dish, dot with more butter, and top with bread crumbs and parmaesan cheese; then bake for 15 minutes at 350. Fast, cheap, healthy, simple, and I've never had a problem with the rice being dry.
@fishhooks and @alice.radley
yes, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureusand other bacteria (or fungi) will be delighted to be kept in the refrigerator for such a ling time as a week or so in rice and other foodstuff.
I'm amazed that The Kitchen is suggesting that we should keep food at the refrigerator for so long, considering the number of cases (and public attention) of foodborne disease in the recent years in the media.
I'm a food engineer and I do keep cooked food in the refrigerator - for 2 days at most, only reheat it once, and just SOME foods. Any leftovers I have that won't be eaten in the next day are freezed.
Information on that for the consumers are available:
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/ResourcesForYou/HealthEducators/UCM109315.pdf
http://www.fightbac.org/storage/documents/coldstoragechart_fnl.pdf
http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm079667.htm
Thanks @cristaleo
I like making ochazuke, a Japanese soup with salmon and a light broth, or arancine , delicious little rice balls you can stuff with anything.
Whenever I eat alone, I always cook 1 cup (using the cup that comes with my rice cooker) of uncooked rice. There's always enough rice for days when I'm particularly hungry and on days when I'm not, I have leftover rice for fried rice or chicken rice porridge (aka arroz caldo), which I usually eat for breakfast the next day.
Rice (all varieties) is OK for 48 in the fridge. Any longer, and it becomes hard and dry, not to mention issues of food safety. It takes about 20 minutes to make a pan of fresh rice on the hob.
48 *hours*
Here's a post with five clever ideas for using leftover rice. Including a (brown) rice pie crust for quiches.
At times when I rush I find that brown rice takes too long to muster up a meal with, and then I go for the quick cook white rice. Now I do cook my brown rice for the week and it works - it also cuts my meal prep time in half, which works for my life-style as well!
I was excited to find this with the heading "cooking for one," but the topic link comes up with only this one-year-old story.... :(