Must Eat Rice Mystery Ingredient Cook Off 

WHAT is it? 

It is a cyber cooking competition.  Participants are to make a food item, which could be desserts, appetizers, snacks, amuse bouche or anything! as long as it is edible, using a pre-selected special ingredient, take a picture of the finished product, describe how it is made and send it to Must Eat Rice Co to post for voting.  Entry that gets the most votes wins! 

What do you win? bragging right + Gift Card to shop on MustEatRice.com

WHEN is the Cook Off? 

The Cook Offs are held monthly and each Cook Off lasts three weeks. The stages: 

1. FREE "Mystery" Ingredient Give Away: Must Eat Rice Co announces the time & pre-determined quantity of FREE ingredients on its Facebook page.  The first people to reply to the give away will have the ingredient shipped to them for FREE.  
2. Reveal: After the FREE mystery ingredients are on the road to the lucky recipients, they will be revealed. 
3. Get Ready: Anyone who is interested in participating in the Cook Off can source their own ingredients and start brain storming for ideas, cooking, baking.. etc. 
4. Posting: All who wish to participate should have their entries sent to Must Eat Rice Co's Facebook page inbox (https://www.facebook.com/MustEatRice/). After a quick review, the entries will be posted on the Facebook page for all to cast votes (hit LIKE).  
5. Winner Announcement: The entry with the highest number of LIKEs wins. 

WHO can play? 

Anyone and everyone can participate in the Cook Offs. 

However, recipients of the FREE ingredients are required to participate.  Failure to submit an entry after receiving the FREE ingredients would make them ineligible to receive any free give aways forever and ever!!! <-- Yes, serious stuff.  Trust us, you don't want this to happen.  You'll miss out big time. 

Rules? 

• Entries must be sent to Must Eat Rice Co by the deadline.  All late entries would still be posted for voting, but are not eligible to win the champion title nor getting the prize.  
• Entries do not have to be original dishes invented by the participants.  Participants can get ideas from cookbooks, TV shows, restaurants.. etc.  However, the picture must be taken by the participants themselves and the dish made by themselves.  
• By entering the Cook Offs, participants agree to authorize Must Eat Rice Co. the use of the entries (picture, recipe and writing) on its social media platforms.  

Must Eat Rice

"Must Eat Rice" is our grandmother's motto, the name of our store, and hence, we thought our first post should be all about RICE!

We love rice, rice is truly a universal food; a commonality across cultures and continents. It's so versatile, you can make sweet or savory dishes, but where to start...  There are so many variety and so many different ways to cook, here, we just want to give some simple guidelines to cook the perfect rice dish.

White rice is the most common variety, it's the most polish, easiest to cook and eat. Short and medium grain white rice being the most popular among Asians, they are also the most technically difficult to cook right. They have more texture as to withstand prolonged cooking and are considered as more flavorful as to enhance strong flavors.

The most premium short grain white rice, for example, is used in the most high-end sushi restaurants in Japan. When cooked perfectly, rice not only provide complementing texture to the fish, it adds depth to the flavor profile. In European cuisines, short grain white rice would be an equivalent to risotto rice, while medium grain rice would be used to make paella.

For day-to-day cooking, short and medium grain rice can be used interchangeably. Popular dishes: paella, risotto and sushi.

Long grain rice, most commonly varieties are Basmati & Jasmine Rice. They are known as the fragrant rice. Great as a compliment to an entree that is the star of the meal. Long grain rice is generally less starchy and easy to cook in the sense that you would likely not end up with a pot of sticky goo. Popular in Thai and Indian cuisines.  In Japan, Chinese speaking countries and Korea, rather than eating it as "rice" on the table, long grain rice are more commonly grinned up to make desserts, savory rice cakes, and dim sum dishes. 

Healthy option when it comes to rice, we generally think of brown rice. Brown rice is whole grain rice, it contains the whole edible part of the rice kernel. Whereas white rice is only the innermost part of the rice kernel, the polishing process removes the bran and the germ. The bran and germ are considered to be high in fiber and nutritional content. Brown rice is tougher to cook and eat.

Black & purple Rice & Red Rice are similar to brown rice, but they are of different variety and usually from different geographic regions.

Haiga Rice is another popular healthy alternative to regular white rice. It contains the white rice portion with the germ, which is considered to have high nutritional value while retaining the taste of white rice.

Sweet Rice or glutinous or sticky rice is more popular in South East Asian countries. They also have short and long grain, purple variety. Often used both whole or ground in desserts, snacks, and specialty dishes cooked with meat, herbs or spices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice
http://www.foodterms.com/encyclopedia/rice/index.html
http://modernfarmer.com/2015/10/what-is-black-rice/

More in depth reading: Paella http://www.finecooking.com/articles/how-to/paella.aspx