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Rice Croquettes
1 cup rice 2 eggs 3 tablespoons milk 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon butter 1 teaspoon chopped parsley bread crumbs Wash rice several times and boil with 2 quarts boiling water 30 minutes. Drain well and put into top of double boiler. Add 1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons milk; add salt, sugar, butter and parsley; cook until egg thickens. Cool and shape into cones, balls or oval cakes. Dip into egg beaten up with 1 tablespoon milk. Roll in bread crumbs and fry in deep hot fat until brown.
A straightforward croquette that depends almost entirely on how dry the rice is when you shape it. Everything else is technique you already know.
- Chill the mixture hardThe recipe says only "cool," but the paste needs at least two hours in the refrigerator, ideally overnight. Warm rice will not hold a cone and will burst in the fat.
- The riceUse a short or medium grain white rice; it releases enough starch to bind. Long grain or parboiled rice stays separate and the croquettes will crumble. Boiling in two quarts of water and draining is essentially the pasta method, which washes off some surface starch, so drain thoroughly and let the steam escape.
- Thirty minutes is for the rice of the periodThirty minutes is longer than needed -- most modern white rice is done in 15 to 18 minutes by this method. Cook until quite soft but not disintegrating, then drain.
- Why the double boilerThe egg is being used as a binder and will scramble over direct heat. Gentle indirect heat lets it set into the rice as a custard. Stir constantly and stop as soon as the mass pulls together.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; "deep hot fat" for croquettes is usually taken today as around 365 to 375F. Below that the crumb coat soaks; above it, the outside colors before the inside is hot. A few minutes should give an even brown.
- A firmer coatingFor croquettes that hold in the fat, roll in fine dry crumbs, then egg, then crumbs again, and rest the coated croquettes 20 minutes before frying.
- Sweet or savoryA tablespoon of sugar with parsley reads oddly now. The sugar may be doing as much for browning and roundness as for sweetness, but if you want these clearly savory, drop it; if you want them as a dessert croquette, drop the parsley and serve with jam.
- YieldAbout twelve croquettes from a cup of raw rice, enough for four as a side dish or six as a garnish for stewed meat.
Croquettes appear regularly in American cookbooks of the early twentieth century, and rice was among the cheaper fillers available for the form. The word is French, from croquer, to crunch, and a croquette was a respectable way to bring yesterday's rice, fish or chicken back to the table in a shape that looked deliberate. Books of this kind leaned on such recipes heavily: they used pantry staples, they stretched a small amount of butter and egg a long way, and they gave a cook something to do with leftovers without admitting that leftovers were involved. The sugar-and-parsley combination here reflects a period in which rice croquettes sat comfortably on either side of the meal, served sweetened with sauce for dessert or plain alongside a stew.