• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Cooking with rice

Nicole T

Well-Known Member
Messages
334
Location
Cheshire
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Diet only
A spin off from my paella discussion on 'what have you eaten today?' I didn't want to derail that thread with it, though.

I've been doing a little bit of Googling, and finding some suggestion that you can significantly reduce the starch in boiled rice by par-boiling it and rinsing it before continuing with cooking.

https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/i...t=All you need to do,for two to three minutes.

I've actually been cooking it the worst possible way, for the last few years. My mum taught me to boil rice in far too much water, pour away the excess, and rinse with boiling water afterwards. But more recently, I've been using a rice cooker and making paellas, both of which rely on evaporating all of the water, and leaving all of the starch behind. Or I've been using microwave rice, which is probably no better.

I know rice is never going to be truly low carb, but I'm just wondering what people's thoughts are on this as a carb reducing strategy. Has anyone experimented with this before? If I could halve the levels of starch in my paella, I could have the same size portions without spiking my blood sugar by 2.7mmol/L.
 
xfieldok said:
Have a look at cauliflower rice. A much better alternative.
Click to expand...
Thanks. I've already got some. I like it (but then I like cauliflower) but it's not 'rice.' I'm often cooking a meal for both me and my son, and he doesn't want to be eating my 'weird diabetic food.' If I'm doing a main with a plain rice accompaniment, I can do cauli rice for me and basmati for him. But in a dish where the rice is mixed in (e.g. paella) that becomes trickier.

I made a paella the other day, and my portion spiked me from 5.5 to 8.2, which obviously isn't acceptable. But I cooked the rice in fish stock (as I normally would for paella) and boiled off the excess water rather than draining it. So all of the starch would have been present in the resulting meal.

It's almost certainly the starch in the rice that's responsible for spiking me. If I can get rid of close to half of it, that figure should come down significantly. I also have a meal quite often with a friend, and she usually makes curry with rice. If par-boiling then changing the water significantly reduces the carb load from the rice, I can simply ask her to make sure she cooks it this way, rather than having to muck around with cauli or konjac.
 

Its probably the carbohydrates in the rice that are impossible to remove.
However you might try washing the rice well before cooking under running water which will remove a lot of the "loose" starch see if that helps.
You might find this amusing
 
My Granny who was born in India, and a darned good cook, always insisted on rinsing the rice until it ran clear.

Having said that. I have tried all the tricks, cooking and reheating, it just doesn't work for me.
 
Nicole T said:
I've been doing a little bit of Googling, and finding some suggestion that you can significantly reduce the starch in boiled rice by par-boiling it and rinsing it before continuing with cooking.
Click to expand...
What I've heard is rice, pasta and even potatoes have a lesser impact on blood glucose if you cool and reheat, the rinsing part is new to me.
As for the cooking and reheating part, I always cook for multiple days, automatically cooling (and sometimes even freezing) before reheating, and it doesn't make one iota difference in the amount of insulin I need for the meal. Which is disappointing really.

What about you simply try and use your meter to see what happens? One day you have the paella with the unrinsed rice, second day with the rinsed. You strike me as a curious person, and I would be interested in the results!
And if it does work out better with the rinsed rice, I'm interested in your paella recipe as well
Nicole T said:
he doesn't want to be eating my 'weird diabetic food.' If I'm doing a main with a plain rice accompaniment, I can do cauli rice for me and basmati for him.
Click to expand...
What I usually do is simply cook meals without the starchy part, nothing 'diabetic weird' about it. A moussaka doesn't need potatoes and I have yet to meet someone complaining about the lack of rice/potatoes/pasta when I cook them a nice dish of two kinds of veggies, one with cheese sauce, and a piece of meat...
 
I'm afraid, I'm another one in the reheated rice, potato or whatever makes no difference to my blood glucose reaction.

If your son doesn't want wierd diabetic stuff, perhaps he (or you) might prefer to swerve to rice element altogether. For me, the rice is just a carrier. The flavour some part of the meal is the curry, for me. When we have curry here at home, I just have more curry. It works for me.
 
I've already done the unrinsed one. 125g of rice and 125g of seafood mix increased my BS by 2.7mmol/L. Far from ideal. I was going to do the next one with less rice, but I'll keep the weights the same and try boiling for 3 minutes, then rinsing. If I can get rid of even 1/3 of the starch, that should keep the rise below 2.

Fingers crossed, it makes a significant difference. Rice is one of the things I miss.
 
What about the 80/20 system. Instead of having 100% rice have 80% rice and 20% cauli? If you reduce the starch by 'say' soaking overnight, the result just might be doable?
 
Ha, I love you're actually trying!
While one time won't be proof one way or the other (too many elements which can skew the results, especially as you only had a 2.7 rise with the usual rice), the results will certainly be interesting.

To my thinking, this is the way to 'owning' your diabetes; pick up everything from all sources, discard the ridiculous and put the rest to the test to see for yourself
 
Paella sounds great, but rice is 77 g carbs per 100 g before cooking. The most efficient way to reduce carbs in rice will likely be to eat less of it. To not feel hungry, I suggest adding more of the other ingredients to the Paella.
 
Lupf said:
Paella sounds great, but rice is 77 g carbs per 100 g before cooking. The most efficient way to reduce carbs in rice will likely be to eat less of it. To not feel hungry, I suggest adding more of the other ingredients to the Paella.
Click to expand...
Well this is very strange. If I Google carbs in basmati, it does indeed give a figure of 77g per 100g of product. When I look at the carbs on the packet of basmati that I actually have, the figure is 25.1g.

There's only 1.3g of fibre, so even that isn't enough to account for the difference.

So I took a very close look at the small print, and the figures on my packet are 'per 100g, as consumed.' Apparently 75g of uncooked rice makes approximately 235g of cooked rice. Now the figures start to make more sense. That makes the carbs around 78g per 100g in the dry product.

So we are now looking at just over 100g of fast release carbs in the 125g of dry weight rice that was my share of the dish. No wonder it spiked me. This is actually a massive relief, because I was trying to work out how just over 30g of carbs had upset my BS to such a degree.

Now to see if I can significantly reduce that hit by par-boiling and draining. I think it's still worth doing as an experiment, and it's not as though it took me to worryingly high levels, last time.
 
I’ve seen a low GI rice at the market, never tried it. Rice is pretty much off limits for me. I allow myself some, but it’s a very very high price. High intensity exercise is the currency. I charge myself one hour for four salmon sushi & rice
 
Adjusting ratios and portion control works well for me. I can eat bread, rice, pasta and potatoes but in much smaller portions than historically (bread, pasta and rice are more spike inducing for me than potatoes). Partly this is a reversal of my concepts of 'good' foods and 'bad' foods. Wherever possible I swap out grain carbs for vegetable carbs or increase meat/dairy and reduce grain carbs. So a bacon sandwich would be half the bread I used to eat with more bacon! I also balance a meal with some grain carbs with all other meals in the day being very low/no carb. For a paella why not try reducing the total rice in the dish to the lowest you can whilst still feeling it "works". I'm often surprised how little carb I need for a meal to feel balanced (in terms of enjoyment). I now make a quiche with 25g of flour. I prefer this to a crustless quiche and it doesn't spike me so it's a win.

Let us know how you get on
 

I envy you. Those carbs wold trigger a binge, I'd be ravenous. Daren't do it - I liken it to an alcoholic having a tipple.
 
Last edited:

It looks like you have figured it out now, but yes, rice absorbs lots of water so cooked rice roughly triples in weight and hence has fewer calories per gram. For this reason I always try to look at the uncooked numbers as it is easy to weigh then and cooked is less well defined. Unfortunaley some of the packages don't have these and only give carbs for cooked portions, so beware.

I note that rice is one of the highest carb food per weight. This is probably why over half of the world's population is able to survive on a mainly rice based diet. Unfortunately diabetics need to reduce (or eliminate) the size of the portion of rice we consume.
 
Last edited:
I think I could get away with half of the rice in this dish and it'd still work. But as a control experiment, I'm going to cook the same quantities as last time, but prep the rice by boiling for 3 minutes then discarding the water, before cooking the recipe exactly as before.

If the method gives me a significant reduction (i.e. knocks a good 0.5 off the spike) then I'll probably combine the pre-boiling and portion reduction methods in future. If it makes little to no difference, then I'll just reduce portions.
 
I bought an old book called The Complete Cookery Book for Diabetics (2nd edition 1959) by Iris Holland-Rogers, who was a dietician at the British Diabetes Association.

Her Boiled Rice for Curry is supposedly 10 grams of carbs and 46 calories. Wash 1 rounded tablespoon of long grain rice in cold water. Sprinkle in boiling salted water. Boil for 15 mins. Drain in sieve and rinse in cold water to separate grains. Place on greaseproof paper and put in a Slow oven, to dry out and reheat. Slow Oven is 150 - 160 C or 300 - 325 F Gas 2-3

Not tried it myself. Definitely cold water to wash and rinse.
 
Nicole T said:
I think I could get away with half of the rice in this dish and it'd still work.
Click to expand...
I found that I actually prefer the reduced carb version of many of my standbys. The current "good carb" promotion meant I'd adjusted upward for things almost without realising. (I feel a tad bit brain washed )
 
EggsEggsEggs said:
1 rounded tablespoon of long grain
Click to expand...
that's about a 1/4 of a cup of cooked rice if I've calculated correctly, a lot below the usual eat this many carbs recommendations.
Is the book any good? It sounds really interesting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn More.…