Dodge City times., 1884-04-17
The Art Of Cooking Rice.

SIR: With your permission. I will
answer the question addressed to "F.'
about cooking rice. AS rice planter,
l am greatly interested in everybOdy's
knowing how to cook rice. Wheat and
rice are the only two grains consumed
exclusively by man, or nearly so. VI
ccrp, oats, barley. rye. ETC., the great
bulk (even of that turned into liquor. q
sarcastic temperance advocate might
say is consumed by beasts. The cOun-
try produces nearly ten bushels, or
three hundred quarts, of wheat per
capita, and scarcely one quart of rice;
yet. in spite of considerable tariff on
rice, the prices per bushel of wheat and
rough rice are not far apart usually.
In rice-growing country everybody
eats rice, and prefers it to bread. II Il
stranger comes among us mot too oldl
in a twelvemonth it is likely he will
show this preference, and children in
variably acquire it. Yet out of a rice
country nobody can eat it, except in
puddings, and the better he loves it the
less the born and bred rice-eater will
have to do with it there. A "So'th
Car linian" from Georgetown or Beau
fort, who eats rice always once, and
sometimes twice and thrice day at
home, will hardly call for it q second
time at the best hotels of New York or
Long Branch. This is strange. but it
is still stranger that, even in the in
terror of South Carolina and Georgia,
rice is not eaten largely. while in the
upper portions of those States, except
by low-county families, it is no more a
regular article of Diet than it is in Ohio
or Illinois. Why is this?
The explanation is to be found in the
cooking, and in that alone. Is it then
so hard to cook? By no means. Or
the contrary, the cooking is of the very
simplest and easiest, so much SO that
every negro girl of twelve or upward in
the rice country can cook it to perfec-
ton. though possibly she can cook
nothing else. In fact. the plantation
rice hands cook it very much better than
you will find it cooked at the best hotels
in Charleston or Savannah. Now,
will tell you how to cook it. so there
can be, l think, no mistake. am fond
of camp hunting in the winter fire.
quently staying out on the river for q
week or ten days, and l always carry
rice because it is so easy to keep and
difficult to injure, under the ordinary
conditions of camp life. when a sudden
shower or leaky boat may ruin your
flour at short notice. Also, l always
carry Ned, black man, who knows
how to cook rice. Many and many
time have l watched him at it by the
camp fire; but last winter, there having
been some discussion of it in the papers,
l took occasion one day to observe Ned
with his rice, very closely, watch in
hand. Here is just what he did. how
he did it. and the actual time. except
of the last operation, which is not i'm
portant, SO you give time enough-not
less than half an hour, and better, an
hour.
First, he poured pint of rice into q
tin pan and picked it over carefully,
throwing out any foreign substances.
Then he poured into the pan some cold
water, washed the rice, poured the
water OF, and picked the rice again.
A second time it was washed and the
water poured off Then Ned put tn
rice into an ordinary two-quart sauce
pan. covered it to the depth of a half
inch with cold water, stirred in the salt,
fitted on the top carefully, and put the
saucepan on . quick fire of Goals. and
went to his other work. In just twenty
Ned returned to his rice and
removed the lid. 1t was done. but not
yet ready for the table. There was q
little water left, which was carefully
poured off; the rice was thoroughly
stirred from the bottom, not the top.
but q tin plate was laid lightly on the
saucepan, and the saucepan set one side
in the hot ashes. where it remained
uefy slosCly steansinq one hour, or may
hap two, when the rice was so dry that |
you might eat it with your fingers. and
1t the same time thoroughly done, and
soft through and through. Nobody |
can like raw rice. neither can any one |
like it sogged with water by IN hours |
boiling and no steaming.-M 7. Evss-
fRH Eost.