Rice-Cookers Are for the Weak

I grew up on diri (rice). The vast majority of the Haitian meals my mother and my grandmother would make would be served with rice. The same goes for my aunts, family-friends, etc. All of this has spoiled me on rice side dishes at American restaurants.

I remember once, when I was a kid, trying rice at a Red Lobster or Sizzler or some other fantastic establishment. I knew something was off when it looked like a little fallen mound of individual grains, no cohesion at all. And it tasted like nothing but chicken broth. Literally, it was as if they just poured the dry rice out of a bag and into boiling chicken broth, and drained it out before it was cooked through. God awful.

East and South Asian cuisines definitely understand rice better. It's given great body and texture to serve as a vehicle for the main dish. They do so with pressure cookers and rice steamers. In Haiti, rice cookers and pressure cookers are a real luxury; as far back as I can remember, every Haitian relative or family-friend I know has cooked rice with nothing more than a cast aluminum or stainless steel pot.

Anyone who's accustomed to a rice cooker will immediately say "but you have to watch it so much more closely," or "but don't you get burnt stuff on the bottom of the pot?" I say "not necessarily," but it does take a fair amount of practice. But once you get it down, and learn how to give rice real flavor, you'll realize it was worth the work. Below is a recipe for basic, plain Haitian-style rice.

Ingredients:

- 1/2 cup of diced yellow onions

- 1 Tbsp olive oil

- 1 cup white long-grain rice

- 2 cups water

- heaping 1/4 tsp garlic powder

- salt and pepper, to taste

- 2 cloves

- pinch of dried thyme

Procedure:

1. Bring the olive oil to medium-low heat in a small saucepan, and sauté the diced onions until they are translucent (but not browned).

2. Add the dry rice to the pan, still on medium to medium-low heat, and stir until all the grains are exposed to the oil. In the oil, the grains will get a little translucent. Heat the rice until you see some of the grains start to become opaque, about 1 or 2 minutes.

3. Once the grains start going opaque, add the 2 cups of water (and enjoy that sound of the water sizzling on the bottom of the pan for a second). Turn the heat to high and bring the water to a boil. Add the garlic powder, salt, pepper, cloves and thyme to the water, give it a good stir and let it boil for another minute. It's a very good idea to taste the liquid to make sure the seasoning is right. That's how your finished rice will taste.

4. Turn the heat to the lowest possible setting, cover the pan, and let it sit for about 10 minutes. By then, the water will have been absorbed into the rice and the grains will be cooked through but give the rice a stir down to the bottom of the pan just to make sure.

Yields about 3 servings.

Like I said, this is the stripped down, plain recipe; my mom would only prep it this way if she was planning to serve it with black bean sauce. Once you master the plain recipe, you can move on to more common Haitian rice recipes, like rice with red beans, or with sweet peas, or (one of my favorites) with Haitian mushrooms and shrimp.