Broken rice and whole rice doesn't taste much different. Usually broken rice come out softer when cooked as these have been overly dried before milling or are not as fully aged as the whole grain rice prior to milling. It could also be caused by equipment that was not in its tiptop condition. The appearance of whole grain would look a lot better, of course. If you do not mind the appearance, you can save a lot of money buying broken rice.
Exactly, I think the flavor depends pretty much from the way we cook it. I used to heat that the broken rice was good to give to the cats, but what, it tastes as good as regular rice, so it's both good to cats and people IMO. Sure, I am not very demanding, but this is certainly something where I don't mind saving.
My mom always bought the highest quality brand of rice when I was growing up. So when I started to cook, I obviously followed her habit. However, both her and I stopped doing that a couple of years ago. We realized no brand rice sometimes is as good as the highest quality one. It's all about the grain. If it's really young rice it will tend to get sticky, so we watch for the "mature" rice in the packaging!
That is how I feel too. I do that with milk, I usually buy a good quality milk because I was used to drink it as a kid. I tried to change to other cheaper brands,, but I do feel a big difference in flavor and sometimes even in texture, but as this doesn't happen with rice I'll just continue buying it.
I always buy non-brand rice. I am usually picky when it comes to food and can usually tell the difference. But rice is just one of those staples that is virtually the same no matter how much you pay for it. Rice is just rice at the end of the day.
I think if rice is your staple food, it makes a difference. Some grains are modified to have a lower nutrient density so the farmers can get a higher yield. I don't think it makes a difference if your diet is full of other whole grains or enriched cereals. But, if you're in a situation anything like mine, you may be eating a lot of rice because of its lower cost. If you eat rice every day, I'd suggest springing for a slightly pricier kind.
Just yesterday I cooked rice once again for the chicken soup and I could not care less about the brand, I seasoned the soup well with chicken, salt, onion, carrot and with all that flavor the rice gets the flavor of the food and cooked with the correct time I don't see what can go wrong.
There probably isn't a difference. I guess you just have to read the labels for the nutrients. I happened to have two brands of rice in my pantry. The first one is Pampa brand from dollar tree. The only nutrient it lists a significant amount of is iron at 2% recommended daily allowance (RDA). The other bag is "My Essentials" which is still an off-brand, but cost a little more than the dollar for 24 oz I paid at Dollar Tree. The My Essentials rice has 2% RDA of Calcium, 15% Thiamine, 10% Iron, and 25% Folate. This is all important if you are pregnant or nursing.
Ah, so now we are getting somewhere passing beyond flavor. With refined products, that include rice I believe, a lot of the nutrients are lost in that refining process. In some cases the nutrients are added after and that should increase the price.
