Persian Strained Rice | Cholo

Persian cuisine is rich in stews or stew like dishes. That is awesome… but what are going to serve the stews with? Bread? Not a really good option! Biscuits or else like that? Not that satisfying! Rice? Well it could be a fabulous choice! But how should you cook the rice? Here is a way of straining Persian rice and assuredly a very desirable way it is! The rice used for Cholo is usually white rice (which is more processed than brown rice). There also is another way of cooking Persian rice which is steaming it and the rice is called Kateh.

Persian Strained Rice | Cholo

Rice is the pillar of Persian cooking. No one can claim to be a professional Persian cook, until she or he can cook a good rice. It takes some time and experience for Persian housewives and chefs to become expert in cooking rice. There are three general types of rice cooking in Iran: Polo/ chelo or strained rice. Kateh and Dami. In this article, we focus on cooking strained rice and its tips.

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Course Main Course

Cuisine persian

Servings 1 person

Ingredients

  

• Rice for each person, 1 cup of raw rice will suffice.
• Oil as much as required
• Salt as much as required
• Water as much as required
• Saffron as much as required

Instructions

 

Making The Rice

• Put the whole rice in a tray and remove any pieces of small stones or debris from it. You can also do this by adding the rice cup by cup and searching for debris carefully.
• Put the rice in a bowl. Wash it by warm water as many times as the water becomes clear (at least four times). Each time you add water, rub the rice with your hands to scrape off any powder substances and then remove the water slowly. You can also drain rice in a fine meshed colander to remove the water.
• When rice is washed enough, for the last time, pour water to the bowl, higher than the rice level. The water level above the rice needs to be almost 5 cm. you can add some salt to it too (Don’t worry about the salt amount at this stage, because it will be washed off again after boiling) and set it aside for at least 2 hours. This time depends on the kind of rice you are using.
• Pick a pot (better to be non-stick) that is bigger than the amount of the rice you have soaked. Fill2/3 of its capacity with water. Boil the water in the pot, then drain water from your soaked rice and gently add it to the boiling water.
• Keep your attention on the pot or else the foam from the boiling water may overflow. When it begins to foam up, scoop the foam and discard
• As the rice starts to boil briskly, lower the heat to medium high, and occasionally and gently stir the rice in a circular motion. At this stage, taste the rice or the boiling water carefully to make sure that the salt is enough. (It is recommended that at this stage, the rice tastes a little saltier than normal.)
• A little after the rice starts bubbling like a fountain, it boils slower/thicker. At this stage test it to see if it is ready for straining. This time depends on the kind of rice you are using, but with at least two hours of soaking beforehand, it takes almost 10 to 12 minutes for the rice to get ready for straining. In order to test the rice, take some rice grains from boiling water and rub them between your thumb and index finger. If the surface of the grains is soft and the core is still hard, rice is ready for straining. If not, give it more time and let it boil, but check its hardness constantly in order to prevent it from overcooking. Have a colander ready in your sink. The colander is better to have legs so that it stands still in the sink and it doesn’t touch the sink bottom.
• Strain the rice. Do not let rice sit in the colander more than one minute, because it gets sticky. Pour warm water on the strained rice to remove extra salt.

Potato Tah Dig

• Put oil in the pot (preferably non-stick) and let it heat.(you can choose another pot or use the same one you used for boiling the rice).Peel and slice potatoes at least 1.5cm. (as many as when set besides one another, the slices cover the whole bottom of the pot). Rinse and drain them. Line the slices at the bottom of the pot in one layer. Add some salt and saffron. (oil should fill half way as high as potato slices). Let them get half fried on a medium high heat.

Bread Tah Dig

• Put oil in the pot(preferably non-stick) and let it heat. Put one layer of Lavash (a kind of thin flat bread baked on tandoor or on a sajj- if you don’t have access to Lavash, you can use tortilla instead). Add some saffron and let it get half fried on a medium high heat.

Rice Tah Dig

• You can make a simple kind of Tah-dig with the rice itself. Put oil in the pot and let it heat. In a bowl, add one or two spatulas of the strained rice. Add some yogurt and saffron to it and stir (the yogurt is better to be strained and not watery), then spread it on the bottom of the pot, press it with the back of your spatula and let it get half fried on medium heat.
• A spatula at a time, put the boiled/strained rice in the pot (on TahDig).  Rice grains shouldn’t stick to the body of the pot. When finished, rice is better to have a hill or volcano like shape! Then, with the handle of your spatula, make some holes in this rice hill so that air can get to the bottom layers of rice.
• Put the lid on the pot, raise the heat and let rice steam with high heat for almost 10 minute.
• Listen to the sound coming from the pot. When the heat evaporates rice water, you can hear a buzz like sound from the pot. At this stage, when you remove the pot lid, you seethe water vapor coming out of the pot. This is when you need to lower the heat, pour some oil and water all over the rice surface, cover the pot lid with apiece of clean cloth (Damkoni) and put the lid back on the pot. Let it steam for almost one or one and a half hour. (this time again depends on the kind of rice you are using.)

Tips for cooking Strained Rice

Length growing:

• one of the signs of rice’s good quality, is how longer the rice grains grow after boiling. This is basically the qualification of the kind of rice you are using, but it also depends on the way of cooking. When rice is boiling (and before straining), you can add one cup of cold water to it, which helps rice become longer.
• The capacity of the pot is also another important factor in the length of the rice. The pot needs to be bigger than the amount of the rice you are cooking in it (almost twice as much), so that rice grains get enough space to grow in length.
• When rice is boiling, add two spoons of oil to it.
• Don’t wash the strained rice with cold water. The temperature difference between the boiling water and cold water shocks the rice and prevents it from growing..

taste of salt (if the rice is too salty)

• If rice is too salty when straining, wash off the extra salt with warm water until the amount of rice is balanced.
• If you find the rice too salty during steaming, add some peeled potato slices. Potato absorbs saltiness.
• If your rice is still too salty despite all these tricks, try to cook the stew or whatever you are serving with rice, with less salt.

taste of salt (if the rice isn’t salty enough)

• Add some salt to the water you are adding for steaming and pour it all over the rice.

the rice might burns (and if it does, …)

• Put some pieces of bread on top of the rice to remove the smell.
• Some onion slices can also remove the burning smell, to some extent.

the rice might be overcooked after boiling it (the first step), and if so,

• Wash it with cold water when straining. This helps the rice grains to become a little harder.
• Don’t add water and oil when steaming.

the whiter in color, the better (if you want to have a whiter rice)

• 3 to 4 minutes after adding rice to the boiling water, add half a cup of French yogurt or a food spoon of vinegar or lime juice to the boiling water.

Even more tips on cooking drained rice (Cholo)

• The amount of water for boiling the rice is important. It is also important how much water and oil you add when steaming. This water evaporates in the closed space of the pot and if it’s too much, rice will be overcooked. For 5 cups of Persian rice, 3 to 4 spoons of water (including cinnamon or cardamom essence if you desire) is enough when steaming. For Non Persian rice, this amount can be more. The amount of this water also depends on the time of straining. If rice is too undercooked when strained, it needs more water when steaming. If you strain it a little later than needed, you need less water when steaming.
• If you prefer healthier foods, you can skip adding oil when steaming.

Serving, Topping and Garnishing Cholo

• As mentioned earlier, rice is the pillar of Persian cooking. There are lots of stews and different other foods that are usually served with rice. Like: Ghormeh sabzi, Gheimeh, Gheimeh bademjan, Kebab, Chicken and …
• Rice is usually served in special trays and garnished with saffron. Other ingredients are also used for garnishing, depending on the type of food being served with rice. If you wish to garnish rice with saffron, in a cup, dissolve some saffron powder in hot water and put the cup on top of the pot lid when steaming. This causes the saffron to get brewed with the heat coming from the pot. When serving, take some rice from the pot and put it in a bowl. Add saffron, oil and a little rose water and stir. A spatula at a time, put the steamed rice in the tray. Then garnish it with saffron rice.

Is white rice beneficial or it is unhealthy for your body?

Persians eat rice a lot. As it was mentioned before Persian cuisine is rich in stew recipes and they go well with cholo or kateh. With this high amount of rice use, is it beneficial or it is bad for our body?

White rice is actually highly processed and this is not a good point! Hull, bran and germ of the rice is almost removed and this is a weak point versus brown rice that has only its hull removed. That is why things like Vitamins and Minerals of this kind of rice is much less than brown rice.