Cooking Brazilian Rice
This is part 2 of a series on Brazilian cooking. Several more articles are scheduled for the next two weeks. Part 1 of the series was Cooking Brazilian Beans.
Brazilian Rice
Before going to Brazil I don’t think I would have paired rice and beans together. I mean, sure there was often Spanish rice and re-fried beans on taco night at home, but beans ON rice wouldn’t have crossed my mind. One of the great things about traveling is that you get to experience new things. Beans and rice is one of those experiences you will want to bring back home.
I was taught visually without measurements but these are approximations should turn out well. Modify them to suit your tastes if it doesn’t turn out how you want.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Long grain rice
- 2 cups water
- 2 tbsp oil (soy oil is typical in Brazil, canola or other vegetable oil works fine)
- 1/4 onion, chopped
- 2 teeth of garlic, crushed or chopped
Instructions
Add the rice, onion, garlic and oil to a wide saucepan and turn the stove to medium heat. Simmer and fry it, stirring frequently until the rice turns white and shiny. At about the same time the onion should be wilted and just barely starting to brown, and the garlic smell should be making you hungry.
Add the water, stir it up once quickly and put a lid on the pan.
Simmer on medium-low until the water is gone. The rice should be soft but not sticky. If it’s too hard add a few tablespoons of water and DO NOT STIR.
Fluff it with a big wooden spoon and serve.
Variations
A popular change is to add vegetables that steam well to the rice while it is cooking (green beans, zucchini, broccoli, chopped carrots, peas). Other changes include adding chicken broth instead of water (or bullion cubes with the water), adding cooked chicken or meat to the rice before or after cooking, or using the rice in fried rice or stir-fry. Enjoy!
Cooking Brazilian Beans
This is part 1 of a series on Brazilian cooking. Several more articles are scheduled for the next two weeks.
Brazilian Beans
Lunch in Brazil is typically centered around a plate of delicious rice and beans. A pile of white non-sticky rick with a s generous helping of soft beans in their own sauce (their starch thickens up the cooking water forming something like a gravy). Next week’s article will explore lunch more fully — for today, let’s focus on the beans.
Beans for lunch every day may sound monotonous, but it grows on you. I grew to love them so much when I was an exchange student that the first thing I bought when I returned to Brazil two years later the first thing I bought was a pressure cooker. I still consider that pressure cooker to be one of my best purchases ever.
There is some disagreement amongst Brazilians about which type of beans should be used for rice and beans. In Minas and São Paulo it was mainly brown beans with the occasional appearance of black or red beans. Here in the USA I use dried pinto beans or black beans. I am growing some Italian Rose and Purple King beans in my garden this year to use as well.
With my first host family, my host father and mother would sit at the kitchen table each evening to pick the rocks out of the beans while talking about the day and drinking. Most people I knew didn’t pick out rocks, I think they are screened better today than they used to be.
Ingredients
- Pressure Cooker
- 2 cups dried beans
- 4 cups water
- Spices to taste
- Oregano
- Garlic
- Other (?) — less common options include cumin and rosemary
- Salt
- Meat (optional)
Instructions
Throw everything into the pressure cooker. The best tasting beans will have a piece of salty flavorful meat cooked with them. Bacon is a good choice, as is good sausage or a piece of fatty pork. I’m somewhat partial to pork products it seems. Beef works well too, but chicken will need a little bit of chicken bullion added to make up for the weak flavor.
Close the pressure cooker and put it on high until it reaches pressure, then turn it down so that it just keeps the pressure up. After 45 minutes (35 for black beans) cool the pan so you can open it then see how soft the beans are.
Bean Doneness
Bean doneness is mostly a matter of personal preference. If you are making soup or salad with them, stop cooking when you can press them with a fork, but they are still firm and pasty.
For refried beans, stop when they mash easily with a fork and have a creamy texture.
For Rice and Beans, you need to stop somewhere in the middle. Ideally you will still have liquid in with the beans. Press several spoonfulls of beans against the side of the pressure cooker and then simmer to help thicken the liquid. You should end up with beans that are extremely soft and creamy but not falling apart in a tasty bean gravy.
Two Day Beans
Some of my most successful times cooking beans have been leftovers.
I stop cooking them when they were still more firm then you want them. They should still be edible and soft enough that you can mash them, but firm enough that you have to do so intentionally.
I let the beans cool down on the stove instead of putting them right in the refrigerator. The next day the liquid had thickened up, the beans had continued to cook as the pan cooled down, and the flavor from the sausage had permeated the beans more thoroughly.
Unfortunately this requires more planning than making beans the same day you want to eat them.
Variations
Once you can cook beans in a pressure cooker a world of options opens up. Add cumin, stewed tomatoes, onions and ground beef for chili. Drain the beans while firm for use in salads and soups. Keep cooking them till they’re mushy, add sour cream, chives and cilantro for a fantastic bean dip. Cook your pork or chicken in with the beans and get juicy fall-apart mean with great tasting beans. Enjoy!
Grandpa Knew What He was Talking About
Michigan is a Prime Target of Terrorist Attacks?
Old people like to tell stories and my granpda was no exception. He didn’t usually make up stories, but sometimes it was obvious that he had gotten his information from a single source a single time and you didn’t always know how right or wrong he was.
One such story Grandpa used to tell me about how Michigan was a prime terrorist targets because the US had radio towers there to control the nuclear sub fleet. I always thought that was weird, because wouldn’t the army have more than one radio station? And why would you put radio stations for subs so far from the rest of the Navy?
Turns out he was right about the radio tower part (still not convinced on the terrorist target part).
How and Why of Submarine Radio in Michigan (and Wisconsin)
FM radio operates in the Mega Hertz range, eg 106.9 FM means that the station operates a frequency modulated radio broadcast on the 106.9 MHz, or 106,900,000 Hertz, wavelength. That means the radio waves are relatively short and you can use a relatively short antenna to send and receive that radio signal. AM uses longer radio waves and needs longer antennas which is why Walkmans and cell phones can include FM radio easily, but not AM.
To broadcast radio through the water to the depth that submarines operate you need to use extremely low frequencies in the 76 Hz range.
Republic, MI and Clam Lake, WI had Extremely Low Frequency radio stations that did indeed broadcast to the US submarine fleets. The radio stations couldn’t be built just anywhere because the antennas need to be “2,140 to 3,726 miles” (thanks Wikipedia!) long. Since a wire antenna that big would be unwieldy, the army hooked 26 mile wire antennas into the bedrock and let the earth be a big antenna. The locations in Wisconsin and Michigan had the right kind of rock to make that easier to do.
The radio stations have been decommissioned since 2004 which makes me wonder how they’re communicating with subs today.
Reading and Learning Comes Full Circle
My grandpa had lots of interesting stories because he was always learning. He subscribed to and read Scientific American and the Reader’s Digest and the Stars and Stripes magazines, among other publications. He was a news man that loved news. I can’t count the times he would literally pull me to his side, and point emphatically at some section of an article which he had circled and underlined with a ball point pen.
I like to think that he learned about these ELF radio stations from an article in one of his magazines. You see, I also love reading news and science articles. Most of my reading today is done online, including today’s big find. Lockheed Martin and the Department of Defense are working on making two-way communications with submarines possible.
Let me state for the record that I fully intend to tell my grandkids about this some day.