Kind Of

What's little and white and crawls up your leg?

Uncle Ben's Perverted Rice.

I love an opportunity to reuse material I learned in the third grade.

Reader RalphieTB counseled me to try converted rice in my congri, and I was afraid he might be insane. The only processed rice I had ever eaten was Minute Rice, which is revolting. But he sounded like he knew what he was talking about, so I made some.

It's not bad at all. It turns out that converted rice isn't rice that has been mangled or depleted or otherwise screwed up. It's just rice that has been treated with steam and pressure. This drives the nutrients into the grain, and it makes the rice less sticky when you cook it. And it makes it resistant to rot and bugs. Weevils hate it.

Back in World War Two, converted rice was popular with the military. They could drop it for the troops, and if it sat a while, it wasn't a problem, because the bugs couldn't eat it. Wonderful, the trivia you can pick up on the web.

It tastes like regular old rice. No deficits that I can detect. So I have no problem with it at all. But I'll probably stick with normal rice in my recipes because you get more variety, and I think you learn a lot more about cooking when you use traditional ingredients.