Cooking Hacks: Cut rice calories by half and other tricks
updated the 6 October 2015 à 23:15
Recently scientists have introduced a way to cook rice that makes it far less calorific. See what other calorie-lowering tricks you didn’t know about.
Rice is simply irresistible. A plate of hainanese chicken or roast pork, no matter how delicious, would be incomplete without rice. But why must a harmless bowl of steamed rice be loaded with calories?
Not anymore. Researchers from the College of Chemical Sciences in Sri Lanka have discovered a life-changing cooking technique that slashes the calories in your rice by half. That is done by dropping some coconut oil (about 3% of the rice weight) to boiling water before adding the rice grains, and then letting the cooked rice cool in the fridge for 12 hours.
The underlying science
Undergraduate student Sudhair James and his mentor Dr Pushparajah Thavarajah tested 38 different types of rice before devising the recipe. The science is simple; it’s based on the chemical property of different starches and the way they’re broken down by the human body.
Rice is made up of two different starches: the (bad) digestible and the (good) resistant. Digestible starches are processed quickly, converted into glucose, which is then stored as glycogen that ups body fat. Meanwhile, resistant starches are broken down slower and hence produce fewer calories for the body to absorb.
Who would have thought that by adding fat (coconut oil contains lipid), rice might actually be less caloric? By adding coconut oil to the cooking regime, rice could have 10 times more resistant starch and 10-15% fewer calories, up to 60% in certain kinds of rice.
Now we’re just waiting for a similar trick for french fries… or is there one already? Check out our gallery for more cooking secrets that slash the calories and alleviate your diet struggles.
Natasha Gan
