Why Chefs Never Buy Pre-Made Rice

Here's the thing about cooking at home: it's easy but it can easily seem the most arduous sometimes. Who wants to dice onions and face the inevitable bouts of tears when you can just buy pre-chopped ones? Or go through the trouble of seasoning meats when supermarkets are full of pre-seasoned cuts that can be ready in a jiffy? And let's admit it: Everyone has considered buying instant or pre-made rice for no other reason besides the fact that, well, you can.

There's no denying the fact that instant rice is quick and convenient, especially when you don't have half an hour to spare for cooking. Plus, with an ample supply of instant rice in supermarkets that can be microwaved in as little as a minute, you don't have to go through the effort of measuring rice, washing it, bringing it to a boil, and cooking it. However, not everyone is a fan of the instant rice varieties. Chef Nicholas Tang of Washington-based DBGB Kitchen & Bar tells Food & Wine that he despises instant and pre-made varieties of rice. "It only takes 10 to 14 minutes to make rice from scratch and it definitely taste nicer than the instant/ready-made version," says Tang and he isn't the only one.

Instant rice is rice that's cooked, dehydrated, and sold in packs that you essentially rehydrate at home (via HuffPost). While this makes cooking rice very convenient, chefs hate it since it's one of the biggest mistakes everyone makes when cooking rice. 

The Huffington Post points out that the process of cooking, dehydrating, and rehydrating that goes into making instant rice strips the grains of a lot of its natural nutrients. Instant rice also tends to be inferior in taste and texture, which manufacturers sometimes make up for with additional seasonings. Reddit, as it turns out, also isn't in favor of instant and pre-made rice for these very reasons.

One Redditor points out that minute rice not only tends to be more expensive than regular rice, but it also takes longer than a minute to cook, contrary to what the name suggests. Another describes minute rice as "eating soft plastic beads shaped like rice aka you can feel each individual grain rolling around in your mouth since it's just so dry." Several users complain that they grew up hating rice, when in reality, they had never tasted regular rice and their dislike for rice came from only ever eating the instant varieties.

Considering the fact that rice cookers have made preparing rice from scratch as easy as it can possibly be, Redditors argue that there's even less reason to choose instant or pre-made rice. One user points out: "Rice is already really easy to make, so why pay more for worse rice that is 'easier'?" It seems that chefs aren't the only ones not in favor of pre-made and instant varieties of rice.