Home › Soups › Thick Rice Soup
Thick Rice Soup
2 pints water or stock Salt and pepper to taste 2 small onions 2 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 cupful rice 1 cupful canned tomatoes, or 4 fresh ones Wash and drain rice. Heat Crisco in saucepan, add rice and stir constantly until a golden brown. Now add water or stock, onions and tomatoes cut in small pieces, and seasonings. Cook slowly for one hour. FISH F SO ISH, though not quite so nutritious or stimulating as butcher's meat, is an excellent article of diet, as it is light and easy of digestion and well suited to delicate persons and those following sedentary occupations, who generally do not take exercise in the fresh air. Fish contains a fair proportion of flesh forming and mineral matter, and the white kinds very little fat, hence their value in a sick diet. A few fishes are rich in fat, as salmon, mackerel, eels, and herrings; they are more satisfying as a meal, but usually more difficult to digest, except the latter, which is fairly easy to digest, and, being inexpensive, forms an economical food. The digestibility will vary also with the quality of the fish and the methods of cooking. White fish when boiled is improved by being rubbed over with a cut lemon, or by adding a little vinegar to the water in which it is cooked to keep it white and firm. The fish should be put into hot, not boiling water, otherwise the higher temperature contracts the skin too quickly, and it breaks and looks unsightly. Salt fish may be placed in cold water, then boiled to extract some of the salt; if the fish has been salted and dried, it is better to soak it in cold water for about twelve hours before cooking. Fish to be fried should be cooked in sufficient hot Crisco to well cover it, after having been dried and covered with batter, or with beaten egg and breadcrumbs. To egg and breadcrumb fish put a slice into seasoned flour, turning it so that both sides may be covered. Shake off all loose flour. Brush fish over with beaten egg. Raise fish out of egg with the brush and a knife, drain off egg for a second, and lay fish in crumbs. Toss these all over it, lift out fish, shake off all loose crumbs, lay the slice on a board, and press crumbs down, so that surface is flat. The thicker the fish the more slowly it must be fried after the first two minutes, or it will be raw inside when the outside is done.
Fish To bone fish. The process of boning is known as filleting and is generally done by the fish dealer, but when this is not the case the single rule for boning must be strictly adhered to in order to keep the knife on the bone-lifting the flesh with the left hand while the knife slips in between the bone and the flesh. Flat fish are divided down the middle of each side well into the bone, and the boning is begun at either side of the incision. Round fish are cut down the back, the flesh is laid open from one side and the bone is removed from the other. Occasionally round fish are boned readily, the whole fish minus the bones being returned to its proper shape, as in anchovies, sardines, herrings, haddocks, etc., in this case the fish would be split down the front, not the back, and stitched together after boning.
Fish stock is made from the bones, skin and trimmings of white fish. These are broken small and generally flavored with onion, parsley, herbs, and seasonings. The proportion of water used is rather larger, as the flavor is much stronger and also more easily extracted than from meat. 2 lbs. halibut 1 cupful tomatoes
A simple pilaf-style soup: the rice is toasted in fat before liquid goes in, which is what gives it flavor and keeps the grains from dissolving entirely. Everything else is a matter of adjusting proportions to modern rice.
- Toast the rice properlyStirring the washed rice in hot fat until golden is the hinge of the dish. Drain it well first, or it will steam rather than brown, and keep the heat moderate so the grains color evenly without scorching.
- CriscoAn all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening, still sold. Any neutral oil or 2 tablespoons of butter works the same way here; butter will brown the rice faster and needs closer watching.
- Two pintsThat is 4 cups of water or stock to 1 cup of raw rice. At an hour's cooking most of it will be absorbed and you will have something closer to a thick porridge than a soup, which is what the title promises. Have another cup or two of hot stock ready if you want it loose enough to ladle.
- Cooking timeModern long-grain white rice is tender in 18-20 minutes; an hour of slow simmering will break the grains down completely. If you want the soup thick but the grains distinct, cook 25-30 minutes and let it stand covered. The full hour suits a rustic, near-creamy result.
- OnionsCut them small, as the method directs, and add them with the liquid rather than the fat. Two small onions is roughly one medium, about 1 cup chopped.
- TomatoesA cupful of canned tomatoes means the tomatoes with their juice. The recipe's own equivalence of 1 cupful canned to 4 fresh implies fairly small tomatoes; two medium modern ones, peeled and chopped, are about equivalent.
- SeasoningSalt at the start so the rice absorbs it, and taste again at the end, since stock reduces over an hour. A bay leaf or a little garlic is in keeping with the style.
- YieldAbout 6 cups, serving four as a first course or three as a light supper. It thickens considerably on standing and will need thinning when reheated.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a product that went into production in 1911 and was marketed from about 1911-12, and that had no place in any existing recipe tradition. Its solution was to reprint the whole standard repertoire with Crisco substituted for butter, lard and drippings, and a straightforward toasted-rice soup of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern lineage duly turns up here with a shortening in the first line. Browning rice in fat before adding liquid is an old and widespread technique, found in pilafs from Persia to the Balkans and carried into Spanish and Creole cooking; the tomato marks this version as a later, New World-influenced descendant. The book also promoted Crisco as kosher and as suitable for delicate digestions, arguments that appear repeatedly in its introductory essays.