The art of burning rice
From the time my mom started dating Ira, her now-husband, I have had an immersive introduction to Persian cuisine. For me the take away message of Persian food is two-fold: 1) Flavor, flavor, flavor without spice; and 2) rice.
I was first introduced to tahdig at a Persian restaurant in Irvine, CA. We ordered tahdig with a few stews to go on top. Actually, I think we ordered stews with tahdig to go underneath, but I soon learned that the true star of the dish was the rice.
So what is tahdig? Tahdig is crunchy rice created cooking rice hard over heat, resulting in a sort of burned, crunchy bottom layer. Easy right? Add the water to the rice and cook on high the whole time instead of simmering. Wrong. That won't work. Even with the simple instructions on the production of tahdig it took me half a dozen attempts to get it right.
A prerequisite for crunchy rice is... rice. To cook the rice properly, I've found that the bulk water method ("pasta method") is best - bring a whole pot of water to a boil and cook the rice, then drain. This is better than the usual rice instruction, which I call the "risotto method" in which a perfect amount of water is combined with the rice and it is cooked until the water is just absorbed. The bulk method is much more predictable.
The rice is cooked using the bulk method for about six minutes until the rice is cooked but not cooked through - one could call it al dente, perhaps. After that, the rice is drained and put aside. Now, the hard part. How to burn rice in a controlled manner.
At my mom's house in in Los Angeles, she has a gas burner. It is much easier to make tahdig on a gas burner as the temperature control is much better. I have a glass cooktop with a halogen lamp at my house in Davis. So after the hard boil on the rice, I need to cool down the burner. I do this by wiping the cooktop carefully with a wet paper towel. Nothing like using the high heat capacity of water to my advantage, right? After the burner has cooled slightly, I wash out the pot that the rice was cooked in and mix some turmeric (poor man's saffron) with vegetable oil and heat that up on the bottom of the pot over medium high heat. Once the turmeric starts to sizzle, I carefully spoon back in the rice. Now the burning begins. As the rice sits in the oil, it basically undergoes a shallow frying. The pot is covered with the lid lined with a dishtowel to absorb the moisture.
The most important thing is to now make sure the rice doesn't burn and carbonize. I use my nose and the rate of steam escape from the lid to judge. I think it is one of those things that takes practice to know what it is supposed to look like. If I had to describe it, I'd say that the steam comes out at a slow leak and smells fragrant. If the steam starts to smell burned, it's too hot. If there is no audible sizzle, it's too cool. I tend to pull the pot off and back on the heat during the 10-15 minutes of medium-high heat. After these first critical minutes of high heat, the pot is turned down to low and cooked for another 30-45 minutes.
After this is done, if you are lucky, you will find this at the bottom of the pot.
Topped with a lentil stew, a perfect dinner.
