White rice, brown rice, Glutinous barley, and Rolled barley. Which one will bulk up the most when cooked?
Fluffy and shiny freshly cooked rice. The texture is full of moisture and is irresistible. By the way, how much do rice and barley, which were hard dried foods before soaking, bulk up (cooked rice gain) after cooking? In fact, the degree of bulking (cooked rice gain rate) varies depending on the type of grain. Therefore, we compared the cooking of four relatively familiar types of grains.
[Experimental method]
Prepare 150g each of white rice, brown rice, barley, and pressed barley. We soaked each type of rice in standard amounts of water (210ml, 300ml, 300ml, 300ml, respectively) for an hour, then cooked them in a rice cooker. After cooking, we transferred the entire contents of the pot to a beaker and measured the height to compare the degree of bulking.
When it comes to bulking, Rolled barley wins by a landslide!
After cooking, the contents of the pot were carefully transferred to the beaker, every single grain, so that the density was as uniform as possible. Rolled barley has a large grain volume, so it also had the greatest degree of bulking. The results were as follows: 2nd place, Glutinous barley, 3rd place, brown rice, and 4th place, white rice.
By the way, what if you cooked white rice with the same amount of water?
Isn’t it natural that white rice, which uses less water, will have a lower rate of increase when cooked? In response to this question, we cooked it with the same 300ml as the others. The rate of increase in cooking increased slightly, but not as much as Rolled barley, and the texture was also too soft for rice.
White rice vs. Rolled barley, Rolled barley wins in terms of calories
Since the volume increases, the amount of dry matter before cooking is less, even if the cooked rice looks the same as the rice bowl, so the calorie intake is lower, right? To confirm this, we put the cooked white rice and Rolled barley into the same size beaker so that the volume is the same, weighed them, and calculated the original amount of dry matter. We calculated the calorie intake!
The result was 184g of white rice and 160.5g of Rolled barley (contents only). The photo below shows this transferred to a rice bowl. This is one rice bowl worth a little more. If we calculate the amount of dry matter before cooking based on the cooking increase rate this time, it becomes 87.4g of white rice and 59.1g of Rolled barley, and the calorie calculation is about 313kcal for white rice and about 197kcal for Rolled barley*. In other words, even if you eat a bowl of rice that looks the same, you eat less Rolled barley, so you can reduce your calorie intake.
Summary
If you eat the same amount of rice as a bowl, Rolled barley is a great ally for dieting because you can eat less without compromising on visual satisfaction. You may not eat 100% Rolled barley every day, but the more it you add to white rice, the less dry matter you eat, even though the appearance and satisfaction you get when eating are the same. This means you can actually eat less. What’s more, the more you cook, the more you save money!
*Barley: Researched by Hakubaku; White rice: Calculated from the 2015 Edition (7th Edition) of the Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan. Calories vary depending on cooking conditions, so they are just a guide.
