A few months ago I attended an event about rice where the participants discussed the role it played in the diet of the countries they represented – India, China, Senegal and Brazil.
For them all, rice is an integral part of the nation’s diet. Surprisingly the speaker for Brazil stated that she didn’t even like rice that much and that she’d been brought up in a household where they followed the macrobiotic diet, and as a result they ate primarily brown rice, so she didn’t have an awful lot to say about it and the role it plays in Brazilian eating habits.
My experience in contrast, is that rice is a common denominator in every Brazilian household at mealtime from North to South and East to West. As a rule of thumb, people are expected to know how to cook good rice in Brazil, and by that we mean to prepare rice where the grains are loose, not stuck together as when we cook glutinous rice.
On the matter of types of rice, the population there buy three different types: long grain, parboiled and short grain. People eat rice daily, and the way rice is prepared may vary depending on the region they live in. In some states garlic/onion/garlic&onion are sauteed first before adding the rice, salt and water.
We at Aipim are claiming our place at tables where there is conversation about Brazilian cuisine.
Taking into account how much the nation loves rice it’s no surprise that there’s a great number of dishes where rice acts as the main accompaniment, and these dishes will vary per region.
We are sharing one of these dishes now and how it’s made – chicken rice:
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