Quick Guide to choose your Italian Rice

Beneficial effects

A lot of researches available on the web say that the consumption of rice 1 or 2 times a week can help the body to reduce the risks of cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Processing

In order to become edible, rice is subjected to treatments that remove it of the external parts to become the shiny rice that is sold on the market. Rice is thoroughly cleaned of dust, earth and other foreign objects, and then undergoes a milling process. Rice is separated of its external skin, which is very rich in silica, with vibrating machines. The elimination of the husk produces a refined rice which is then brushed, oiled and polished to make the surface of the grains smooth and brilliant white.

Brown rice naturally does not loose any of its properties, because it only undergoes one process that of passing through cork rolls where the grain is deprived of its inedible outer part, the husk. This rice is rich in vitamins A, D and E, but needs a longer cooking time (over 50 minutes). The semi-whole rice undergoes two processes and retains about half of the original germ, so the cooking time is greatly reduced. White rice, instead, is passed through the rollers a third time and is deprived of all the germ and the cooking is reduced to 14/20 minutes. The law that regulates bio-products prohibits the polishing of the grain, which has only an aesthetic purpose.

White rice that is normally sold is deprived of the outer coating, and is then brushed with glucose and talc before being “shined” (made glossy) with seed oil and some Vaseline oil; often poor quality compounds are also used. For those who like shiny rice, it is good to know that magnesium silicate, a talc component, is a suspected carcinogen of the stomach, while paraffin used for glazing is accused of damaging the gastric mucosa. In addition, the refining, impoverishes the rice of its important nutritional components.

The industry has developed a number of procedures to treat rice so as to enhance the value. “Parboiled” rice for example is wet with water and then treated with steam, so it significantly reduces the loss of its nutritional substances and increases the resistance of the grains during cooking. Parboiled rice is light brown in colour.

Defects

Visual inspection is very important in verifying the quality of the rice. If rice is uniform it is easy to see the flaws, but if different varieties of rice are mixed together it may be difficult to recognise each variety and you may not know their origin, making it much more difficult to understand if you’re buying a good product. Too many defective grains also disrupt the behaviour of rice in cooking.

Here is a list of flaws that you should check:

Presence of grains of different varieties;

Malformations compared to the characteristic shape of the variety;

Sprouted grains. If the grain’s tip has been removed;

Broken grains, may mean that a part of the grain has been removed because it was defective;

Chalky grains that have, in whole or in part, an opaque appearance, mealy, chalky;

Presence of black or reddish streaks;

Amber grains: are pale straw in colour, or the grain may have changed colour for reasons other than the parboiling process;

Stained grains: they show different coloured streaks or spots;

The sale of rice with a quantity of defective grains is still allowed (no more than 12% weight) that reports the indication “Rice subtype”, clearly visible on the package. Defective rice is to be used for other purposes such as in semi-finished products, derivatives or to produce animal feed.

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