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Here is the secret to cooking healthy rice, without oils or additives

Rice is an excellent staple food, well balanced in nutrients and nourishing for the body. Cooking healthy rice is quite simple but not many know it. If you choose unprocessed, unenriched, unbleached rice, you’re halfway there; but unless you know this secret, there is no way you are cooking healthy rice. Curious? Don’t worry, I’m about to reveal it!

Just as choosing healthy ingredients is important to healthy cooking, equally important is the way we cook them. The problem with cooking rice is that conventional ways of cooking involve the use of a metal/ceramic pot. This unfortunately makes your rice unhealthy in more ways than one.

First, these metals and ceramics leach metal ions that react with the nutrients in the rice at cooking temperature (heat is a catalyst) and render it toxic. Sounds amazing, right? I felt the same way until I did a home test in my then favorite rice cooker (a stainless steel pot). The test is quite simple, all you need is some baking soda and follow these steps:

1. Boil 2-3 cups of water in any pot, when it starts to boil add 2 teaspoons of baking soda, boil for 5 more minutes. Turn off the stove.

2. Wait until cool enough to taste and then taste the water (take a sip). If you taste metals, that’s what you’re eating! If the water tastes like rubber/paint, it’s the enamel/enamel chemicals.

As a control, mix 2 teaspoons of baking soda in 1 glass of water and take a sip; you will only notice the taste of baking soda.

It is recommended that at least 80% of the food we eat be alkaline, baking soda is also alkaline and therefore very much like our food. If a pot is leaching metals into the alkaline baking soda solution, it will definitely leach out while the food is cooking. This is the working principle of this test.

Second, the strong heat from the metals/ceramics dissolves delicate nutrients and makes the rice nutritionally depleted. This heat is also uneven and as a result is not evenly distributed, leaving the rice overcooked or unevenly cooked (one of the reasons the grains don’t look fluffy and separate from each other).

I did some research and found this all natural pure clay rice cooker and decided to give it a try. The first thing I noticed about them after following the alkaline baking soda test is that they don’t leach! Plus, they don’t get too hot and you can easily hold them with your bare hands or a dish towel. The heat radiating from its walls is far infrared heat. This heat penetrates deep into each kernel, cooking them evenly and thoroughly, keeping the nutrients intact.

The rice cooks up soft, delicious and fluffy with just the right amount of moisture, as the pot filters excess water through the semi-porous walls. No artificial additives, fats or oils are needed: the pot takes care of cooking the perfect rice for you. That’s why I think it’s the ideal rice cooker.