I went to my neighbor’s tonight for dinner, pork and rice. I’m not very skilled with chopsticks, so I used a fork. The rice was sticky and the thought came to me, why in the U.S is non-sticky rice considered better than sticky rice? I kept remember those old Uncle Ben commercials where they made it sound like the best thing since sliced bread. Yet, I need a lot of butter and salt to eat it, while I eat my neighbor’s rice straight.
IS it really considered better to have non-sticky rice? I always kind of thought that the commercial was kind of trying to convince me. “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
Not sure about rice, but it’s a common thing to take a cheaper or more available product which is inferior in taste and convince people that it taste better (or sometimes is better for you). You tell people that it taste better and they start believing it.
Those ads started their run in the early 60s. An era when most white-bread Americans outside NYC & SF would have had to drive 200 miles to find the nearest Chinese restuarant. Not any of them would have wanted to.
At that time, sticky rice was ethnic & weird. For rice as a side to Gosh-darn Real American Food, e.g. pork chops with tan gravy, or a sirloin with extra salt, that sticky furrin rice was just not right. Suzy Homemaker would never serve that to her Man when the convenience and Americanness of Uncle Ben’s magically converted instant rice (registered trademark) was available. Or so the advertiser wanted you to think.
The “As seen on TV” meme was still 10 years in the future, but they’d sure have used it too if it’d been available to them.
Here in 2009 their key selling feature seems almost incomprehensible. And they’d sure never start a new rice product from scratch using the non-stickiness of the rice as a selling point. But ultimately a brand is about the customer remembering your name & associating it with a category, e.g. “Rice == Uncle Ben’s” and ideally “Uncle Ben’s == rice”. In math, equality is commutative. Not so in human (sub-)conscious thought.
Why the consumer makes the association is really immaterial. Whether UB’s is stickier, whiter, heavier, or makes for better stool consistency really doesn’t matter. but once the assoociation is in place, the advertisier needs to continue to nurture it forever, and not clutter it with other competing associations.
I learned from my Japanese wife years ago that they consider “fluffy” rice an abomonation. Japanese-cooked rice is always stickey. It does make it easier to eat with hashi.
Since the Colonial Era long-grain rice has been the type grown in the Eastern and Southern U.S., so it was the type most American people were more familiar with. It was brought to the U.S from Africa, not Asia.
Short-grain rice (the kind used in Asian cooking which clumps) wasn’t grown in the U.S. until later. I think Asian immigrants brought it into widespread cultivation in California in the 1920s. By then, long-grain rice had a 200 year lead.
Rice in Hispanic and Indian cultures is not cooked sticky. If it came out clumpy you did something wrong. Paella isn’t made with short grain rice. It would turn out horrible if you tried.
I like them both. They are just different foods, and I never heard that short grain rice is low class. People who don’t know much about rice might think that short grain clumpy rice is just long-grain rice that’s been crazily overcooked.
It’s not a matter of sticky rice being low-class and non-sticky rice being high-class. Basmati rice, for instance, isn’t sticky and is often used in Indian cuisine, while sticky rices might work better with East Asian cuisines that are eaten with chopsticks.
Uncle Ben commercials plug the “not sticky” angle because standard American long-grain rice isn’t naturally sticky. If it’s clumping, you probably cooked it too much/used too much water and it’s mushy. Americans probably ended up considering this the “normal” kind of rice because rice in British foodways comes largely through the influence of India, which traditionally used non-sticky varieties.
Rice is used worldwide, and there are many varieties of the rice grain (1), and rice dishes (2). There’s not one that’s better or worse than the other. It all depends on the cuisine you’re trying to serve. My Thai food? Damned well better be sticky. Risotto? Nope. Mexican rice? Nope. Lemon rice soup? Another thing altogether.
Sticky rice in Thailand is associated only with northeastern food, and to be honest anything from the Northeast is considered a bit low class. Sure is good, though.
BTW: Sticky rice here is finger food. No rice is eaten with chopsticks. That’s purely a Chinese thing; the ethnic Chinese here will do this but never the ethnic Thais. Thais use chopsticks for noodle dishes, but a fork and spoon for regular rice, always. And always fingers for sticky rice.