Ok, if I boil some rice with water, and take the ricey boiled water, and put it in, oh, say, a petri dish, and I put it (dish w/ rice water) in the refrigerator, will it make a gel??? I have heard it is a great substitute for agar. Also, some rice that i boiled, I left wet, and put it in the refrig to save, the next day, it seemed to be in a gel.

 

Is boiling rice and taking the "juice" a procedure of making gel, will it work, or was my experience just a freak accident, comments will be appreciated?

Not that it's helpful... but, so you know, I like to think of ALL important discoveries as 'freak accidents'.

 

If they weren't, it makes you wonder how the idea of a suppository came about... *cringe*

Ok, if I boil some rice with water, and take the ricey boiled water, and put it in, oh, say, a petri dish, and I put it (dish w/ rice water) in the refrigerator, will it make a gel??? I have heard it is a great substitute for agar. Also, some rice that i boiled, I left wet, and put it in the refrig to save, the next day, it seemed to be in a gel.

 

 

Why not just try it?

It will, but you have to over-cook the rice, and even then, once you have strained the 'ricey water' off, you may need to keep it over a low heat for a while until some of the excess water evaporates. What you are left with is starch. Lots of stuff grows in starch.

what does agar come from? i've seen it in some exotic food shops but never been sure if it's the stuff of agar plates.

It produced from seaweed I believe. It is full of essential stuff that lots of things need to grow and it comes in powder form, naturally has gelatin in so it sets like a jelly. It is a pretty ideal substance for all manner of experiments. It is also used in japanese cooking I believe, so it is probally the very same stuff you saw in a shop.

the rice idea works well, I`ve done it by accident before. to cheat though, you can buy a bag of rice flour and use that, arrowroot is also good

incidently, if you leave this liquid from the rice to dry on a large tray until it becomes clear and brittle, break it up and put it into very hot vegatable oil, they will expand about 3 times their original size, you`ve just made prawn crackers

 

[edit] have a read here 1`st; http://www.southwark.gov.uk/Business/FoodBusiness/FoodHandling/Rice.html

this is really rather important!

http://www.amigadude.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/emmathechef/rcp000067.html

 

Seems like you are a bit of a prawn cracker expert :|!

wow! now THERE`S a blast from the past!

how on earth did you manage to find that, what did you type in for the search?

I`m impressed!

I guess just YT2095 into google would probably do it.

agreed if you could be bothered to sift through all the hits, but what on Earth would posses someone to do a search for ME?

it has to be Prawn Cracker rellated somehow, surely? )

agreed if you could be bothered to sift through all the hits

Well you can always narrow down the search...

this: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22prawn+crackers%22+YT2095&spell=1

 

is the only one that gives the correct hit.

it just stikes me as a bizzare thing to search for

To be fair, a google for YT2095 only gives 3 pages of hits, and that site is on the second page of results - not too hard to find out.

true, but why would anyone bother in the 1`st place, is my point?

I actually did a recipee search on the bbc food website. One of the first or second links leads to that.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?go.x=0&tab=www&go.y=0&go=go&q=prawn%20crackers&scope=all&uri=%2Fhome%2Ftoday%2Findex.live.shtml

 

5th link on "results from the web".

 

Just goes to show, you can find anything on the internet.

Very cool!

true, but why would anyone bother in the 1`st place, is my point?

 

Stalker?

 

LOL, PLEASE don`t say that, that would make my 5`th stalker so far over the net! and no, I`m not kidding! I`ve had to get legal with one person from the USA, she was just NON STOP, and yeah, it got a bit scary at one point!

 

there`s another memeber on here JohnN, he`ll know exactly who I`m on about

 

anyway, that aside him looking on there was actualy quite logical, as I don`t know anyone that doesn`t like prawn crackers, so it`s only natural that you`de wanna know/learn how to make them

That actually inspired me to make some, so I wanted to look for a proper recipe. And the first one I come across that makes any sense has a credit for YT, how weird is that. The net is a small place.