White rice is technically not that healthy, although the Japanese seem to eat lots of it and remain super skinny, so maybe the fear is overblown. But I once came across a “protein hack” for rice on YouTube which involves mixing rice in with beans to make for a slightly lower-carb, higher-protein rice. Which seemed like a pretty neat idea to me.
The ratio that I’ve gone with is:
- 4 cups white rice
- 2 cups quinoa
- 6 cups water
Wash the rice as normal, and thoroughly mix it together with the quinoa and water (you don’t want the quinoa staying in big clumps). You then cook it the same way you would with normal rice. If you’re living in Japan and eating a lot of rice, I would for sure recommend owning a rice cooker. I do it in a pressure cooker, which involves cooking it for 3 - 4 minutes once it’s reached pressure and starts whistling.
The original YouTube video I saw called for some other type of bean, but we’re in Japan, so of course you’ve gotta use edamame. You’ll have to do your best to find a bag of frozen shelled edamame because shelling it yourself is a pain.
If I’m meal prepping all the rice into a freezer, I won’t bother defrosting the edamame - I’ll just portion it out into different containers along with the servings of rice.
Or I will defrost the whole thing (boil it in some water) and then mix it in with the rice in the pot.
I think what I like about this specifically is if you look at keema curry or oyako-don, it’s very brown, so the edamame adds a nice pop of green in your dish.
I’m not really sure where is the best place to buy quinoa in Japan - I buy a 900g bag of it on Amazon. The shelled edamame comes from Niku-no-Hanamasa, although I’m sure any large supermarket chain will stock it.
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