Tell me the details like what makes yours perfect, why, and your cultural influence if any. I mean, rice is totally different with Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Persian food just to name a few. It is not just the spices or sauces I’m mostly interested in. These matter too. I am really interested in the grain variety and specifically how you prep, cook, and absolutely anything you do after. Don’t skip the cultural details that you might otherwise presume everyone does. Do you know why some brand or region produces better ingredients, say so. I know it seems simple and mundane but it really is not. I want to master your rice as you make it in your culture. Please tell me how.
So, how do you do rice?
What is your cultural fancy rice? Like when you want to make something flavorful, different, special, or you are just mixing up some leftovers what do you do in these situations?
I forgot about that. We usually put pandan leaves in there from time to time to make it more fragrant. But otherwise, it’s mostly plain rice. Our dishes usually have either a tomato-based sauce or broth anyway, so that takes care of additional flavor.
We call leftover, day-old rice “bahaw”, and is usually made into “sinangag”, which is literally garlic fried rice, and is usually cooked during the following day’s breakfast.
Here’s a nice blog post with pictures that made me hungry: https://www.kawalingpinoy.com/sinangag/
There is a lot! One of the simplest ways to do this is to mix in the soup of a dish. We have a lot of soupy dishes (I’ve always wondered if this has something to do with how well they keep) - Adobo, Sinigang, Bicol Express, Tinola, etc. - and the simplest way to make a flavorful rice is to take the soup of these after cooking and put it over the rice. Generally you do this while eating that dish, but you’ll often see this done even when the original dish is already eaten - one of my favourites is to put pork sisig over sinigang rice. Adobo in particular is great because that soy sauce based soup (and its coconut-added variety) is sooo flavorful.
Another way you’ll often see a spruced up rice is in the form of sinangag, which is essentially like our “fried rice”. You take day-old or refrigerated rice and fry it up with some minced garlic that’s also fried until it’s very crispy. The garlic gives you a little crunch while you’re eating but also introduces a ton of aroma. Sometimes you’ll see this done with butter instead of just cooking oil, or with magic sarap (which is MSG and other seasonings). Not gonna lie, it’s delicious but maybe a bit much.
Other than that, people do actually just fry up rice with bits of meat/egg/veggies on it. Whatever they have on hand. Anything that has leftovers. Afaik, it’s not really called anything here, just something that people do.