Our story begins one faithful afternoon in Sherman function hall roughly two years ago … I, a young woman with chronic stomach issues, was on a new diet where I could no longer eat gluten (or really anything with good seasoning). My usual pizza and salad combo would no longer get me through the dining hall madness, and I was left in utter despair. Until I discovered my north star in the darkness: the jasmine rice.
For those of you without dietary restrictions, this may be difficult for you to understand. Essentially, when you can no longer eat things with much flavor, you begin to find flavor in the subtleties. I tried many different types of rice in the dining hall, yellow, cilantro-lime, basmati, white, sushi, rice and peas, you name it, but nothing compares to the jasmine rice. There’s this simplistic underlayer of a familiar white rice, a textural intrigue with the length of the grain and the slight oil on the surface. Combined with the ultimate cherry on top of a nutty aroma and slight flavor, I became hooked. It just made everything I ate a little bit better. Chicken, deli meat, tofu, lamb, even those dried chicken cube things at the All Good station; everything tasted good with the jasmine rice.
As soon as I got comfortable with my new routine, the tides began to shift once again. I discovered that the menu online would say there was jasmine rice, then it was nowhere to be found. Or that the sign above the rice would say jasmine rice, but it just wasn’t the same flavor. Worst of all, there would be weeks on end where the jasmine rice seemed to just disappear. Sure, I substituted with plain white or basmati, but it just didn’t hit the same way. Finally, after years of complacency, I had enough.
I bought a rice cooker and began testing. I tried several brands of jasmine rice and many different ratios of rice to water. However, I could never get that same flavor I craved from the dining hall jasmine rice. My rice lacked that nutty flavor. Once I exhausted every idea between my below-average culinary brain and terrible Google search queries, I finally asked someone at the dining hall. If you were the woman I interrogated about the jasmine rice, thank you for your help. I was genuinely so thrilled. She told me I was missing the very simple answer: a spoon of canola oil and a pinch of salt. I was shocked to say the least. I didn’t even own canola oil. Of course, I ran to the store to purchase some and began my new experiment.
The first attempt failed miserably. I put the smallest amount of canola oil into the rice cooker before starting it and it tasted like nothing but plain rice. The next attempt I added oil and salt before starting the process and, once again, nothing happened. I was starting to lose hope of ever recreating the rice but I could not fathom that the woman at the dining hall would have lied to me, so I tried one last time. On my last attempt, I cooked the rice first, then poured in the canola oil with a pinch of salt and mixed. While I cannot say that I recreated the exact flavor experience I get from the dining hall jasmine rice, it at least felt within the ball park for the first time.
So this is my plea. My friends are already on top of messaging me when there is jasmine rice in the dining hall, so don’t worry about that. My problem now is that I’m running out of time. I’m about to graduate. I can’t come back here for jasmine rice, that would be really pathetic (no offense if this is you, but that would be really specific). Help me crack the code. I’m not sure if I have the courage to harass the dining hall staff for the exact brand of rice and canola oil, but maybe you do. Or maybe you or one of your family members is a jasmine rice pro and totally understands this nutty flavor that eludes me—help me out! For now, I can get by with my distant cousin jasmine rice, but maybe, just maybe, I can achieve the jasmine rice of my dreams before I graduate. It’s either that or I start eating gluten again, and I really can’t handle that.
