The Culinary Institute of America

Watch Chef Bill Briwa prepare a Beef Satay Rice Bowl.Download Podcast Video

Watch Chef Lars Kronmark prepare Seven Rice Tabbouleh Salad with Green Lentils, Fava Beans, Tomatoes, and Cucumber Download Podcast Video

With Culinary Institute of America chef-instructors to guide you, you'll perfect your technique for making some of the world's classic rice dishes and learn some contemporary ways to present them. Watch Chef Brenda LaNoue prepare Mongolian Barbecued Pork Fried Rice.Download Podcast Video

Rice Stuffings: Savory Fillings for Vegetables and More: As a stuffing base, rice has numerous virtues. It helps stretch more expensive ingredients, such as meat, shrimp or portobello mushrooms. It absorbs the flavor of its wrapper—grape leaves, bell peppers, chicken, boneless quail—to make an especially tasty filling. And it can head in any ethnic direction. Download Podcast Video

Pilaf: Keeping Every Grain Separate: Pilaf. Pulao. Polow. Perloo. Rice-eating cultures around the globe have similar names for the basic technique of lightly toasting rice in oil before cooking in seasoned broth, resulting in grains that are fluffy, separate and full of flavor. Download Podcast Video

Rice Bowls: Popular, Profitable and a Platform for Invention: The daily rice bowl that is part of almost every meal in China is poised to score big in the U.S. At Big Bowl, a Chicago-based chain, diners have embraced the Asian concept of a rice bowl topped with kung pao beef or Panang curry chicken. In college foodservice, rice bowls are a top trend because they're easily adaptable to ethnic flavors and perceived by students as healthy. It's the ultimate one-bowl meal and a fun way to eat, even if you aren't adept at chopsticks. Download Podcast Video

Sushi: Where Rice Becomes Art: The success of takeout sushi in supermarkets makes it abundantly clear that sushi has risen to become a favorite food and top-selling item across many food venues. Americans from coast to coast have embraced this Japanese culinary tradition. Today's kids and and teens love sushi, attracted by the jewel-like colors, the tingle of wasabi and the gentle sweetness of the sushi rice. For more guidance, watch Chef Toni Sakaguchi prepare an assortment of sushi, including maki and uramaki sushi.Download Podcast Video

Jambalaya: A Spicy Showcase for Southern U.S. Rice: You know a dish is really good when everybody wants to claim it. Is jambalaya a Creole or a Cajun creation? Both groups believe firmly that it's theirs, and we may never know the answer. Suffice it to say that the invention of jambalaya was inevitable in a rice-growing state with a strong Spanish presence. The fingerprints of the Spanish are all over jambalaya, with its green peppers and sausage and spice. The difference between paella and jambalaya, after all, is mainly a matter of seasoning. Watch Chef Lars Kronmark make a traditional Smoked Chicken and Andouille Sausage Jambalaya using U.S. long grain rice.Download Podcast Video

Italian risotto provides a delicious foundation for showing off the best of the season. Whether you stir in asparagus or fava beans in spring, tomatoes and basil in summer, wild mushrooms in autumn or butternut squash in winter, you will have an almost-guaranteed hit on your hands. Risotto welcomes your creativity, and diners never seem to tire of this creamy northern Italian specialty. Risotto can be strictly traditional or updated with fresh ideas. For an example of a creative menu idea, watch Chef Toni Sakaguchi prepare Beet and Pancetta Risotto Topped with Herb Salad and Goat Cheese.Download Podcast Video

One of Spain's foremost contributions to gastronomy, paella has humbled many chefs. It is easy to make paella, not so easy to make a great one. Getting the rice perfectly cooked and seasoned requires attention to detail. Watch CIA Chef Brenda La Noue prepare Chicken, Chorizo, and Saffron Paella with Olives, Red Peppers and a Hazelnut Picada. A few pointers about paella: U. S. medium- and short-grain rices have the plump, tender texture and clingy quality that are essential to authentic paella. Long-grain rice will not produce the proper result. Great paella starts with a sofrito, a slow-cooked flavor base of olive oil, onions, garlic and tomato. Paella is only as good as the stock used to make it. Whether you use poultry, fish or vegetable stock, it should have rich flavor and be well seasoned. Figure about 2 cups stock to 1 cup U.S. medium- or short-grain rice. This ratio may vary a little depending on what's in your paella. Clams and mussels, for example, release liquid, so you can get by with a little less stock. Use a paellera, the flat-bottomed, slope-sided traditional paella pan. It has the broad base and shallow sides that allow for rapid and even evaporation of the stock. Cook paella uncovered and never stir after adding the liquid. Stirring will cause the kernels to lose their integrity and result in a gummy paella. Paella needs a rest period to allow the rice to plump and the flavors to marry. Remove it from the heat when the rice is still a touch firm and let rest 5 to 15 minutes before serving. Download Podcast Video

From the bustling spice markets of Cochin, India… to vibrant Oaxaca, land of the seven moles….from San Sebastian, headquarters of the daring new Spanish cooking….to magical Bangkok, where sumptuous curries challenge our palates with their bold, spicy flavors…the world of food takes us places beyond imagining. For a chef, every journey brings new tastes, new ingredients, new skills and inspiration. The more we see, the more we grow. Travel with Julie Sahni, the cookbook author and Indian food expert, to the coconut plantations of Kerala and the fragrant spice stalls of Delhi. Meet Rick Bayless, chef, Mexican cooking expert and your guide to the subtle secrets of mole negro. Cook a Catalan seafood paella with paella masters from Barcelona, and learn the elements of authentic pad Thai from one of Thailand’s most eminent chefs. Fasten your seat belt for a whirlwind tour of the world’s best tables.Download Podcast Video

The signature flavors of Thai cooking lie in its foundation seasonings—the ingredients a Thai cook uses to add sweet, sour, salty or herbaceous notes to a particular dish. Chef McDang leads us through those essential, defining ingredients.Download Podcast Video

In India, fruit chutneys go far beyond the mango version known to most Americans. Watch chef Abhijit Saha prepare one of his favorite chutneys, made with dates, raisins, spices and pomegranate juice.Download Podcast Video

Exotic and mesmerizing, India is a land of complexity and contrast, a vivid tapestry of peoples, languages and cultures. Among the oldest civilizations on earth, Indian culture has evolved over centuries, absorbing ideas from the Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Moghuls, Portuguese, Dutch, French and, of course, the British. From the Moghuls, northern Indians learned to make rice pilaf and biriyani, an elaborate layered dish of rice and meat. The Moghuls’ refined cooking became the palace cooking and the dominant influence in the north. In the tropical south, the food is hotter and seafood dominates the coastal diet. The treasured fruit of the coconut palm yields coconut milk for curries and coconut water for toddy, a fermented beverage. From north to south, India offers an endlessly varied feast, befitting its varied geography and multicultural heritage. Join us as we tour the spice coast of tropical Kerala, where home gardens are a tangle of pepper vines and cardamom bushes and mountain plantations yield coconut, cashew nuts, nutmeg and coffee. We’ll cruise the backwaters of Kerala, past rice paddies, shrimp farms and mango trees. With local cooking teacher Nimmy Paul, we’ll have a private lesson in Kerala home cooking, and we’ll watch the great Kathakali dancers perform in their dazzling makeup. Moving north, we’ll experience the rich Moghul cuisine and the splendor of the Taj Mahal, the most beautiful tomb ever created, an emporer’s tribute to his beloved wife. In nearby Delhi, we’ll explore the colorful stalls of the market, learning the names and uses for the mysterious vegetables and fruits, lentils, chilies and herbs that underlie this major regional cuisine. In Jaipur, our culinary tour leads us past Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds, a late 18th century example of architectural artistry. And we’ll watch elephants bathing in Moatha Lake outside the fabled Amber Fort, overlooking the great desert plains of Rajasthan. Together, we’ll uncover the essence of the Indian kitchen as we learn from tandoor masters, market vendors, and specialists in biryani and dosa. In this vast country, with its well-preserved regional cooking and agricultural abundance, we’ll never lack for extraordinary foods to taste. Download Podcast Video

India is an enormous country, encompassing numerous religions and languages and every possible landscape, from the snow-covered Himalayas to the tropical palm-lined coasts of the south. Likewise, Indian cooking is far from monolithic. To begin to understand it, we must divide India into regions. Suvir Saran, chef-owner of New York City’s Devi restaurant, helps us out.Download Podcast Video