Tutorial: Tazukuri
Ah, tazukuri. I’ve loved you for a long time, though sadly, I only recently learned your name. Which is shocking, considering how many times I’ve eaten you and thought to myself, “why don’t I try making this at home? I’d eat it ALL THE TIME!”
I finally learned it (well, obviously), and indeed it’s ridiculously simple. While not exactly health food, it’s healthier than a lot of snacks. If you, like me, are the least bit lactose-intolerant, it’s also a really good source of calcium—one of the reasons it’s so popular in Japan. (If you’re my friend Melanie, I do apologize, and you may not want to read this post. I’ll understand entirely if you skip it. 
)
Follow the jump for more.
Tutorial: Perfect Rice Forever, or How to Cook Perfect Long-Grain Rice
There are plenty of good tutorials out there about how to cook various types of rice, if one looks. Trouble is, a lot of them are based on your already having a rice cooker. If you don’t have one (you poor person, you), a paragraph or two might be added about how to cook rice on the stovetop, or possibly in the microwave. Unfortunately, they’re usually not nearly as detailed as the ones about how to do it in a rice cooker.
So what are you meant to do if you don’t have a rice cooker? While I’ve used one when cooking at restaurants, I’ve never had one at home. I don’t cook rice every day, but I do cook it often enough that I buy it in 25 or 50 pound bags of our most used kind (as mentioned previously, I have several types of rice on hand at any given time) and have an airtight wheeled bin for it in my kitchen.
Follow the jump for exactly how to cook perfect long-grain rice (including jasmine and basmati) on your stovetop. In a covered pot. With water. It doesn’t get much simpler than this.
Janaki
