I’ve recently been trying to put some new meals in my repertoire and when browsing for new ideas I’ve noticed that many recipes call for day old leftover rice instead of fresh one. Egg fried rice for example. Some people even seem to insist that it doesn’t work with fresh rice. Why is that?
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If you take uncooked rice, cook it, and let it cool, it doesn’t go back to being uncooked rice. When you cook things, they don’t just get hot, they undergo physical and chemical changes, changes that can’t be undone. And some of those changes occur over time, not just as you cook it, but as it cools again.
In the case of rice, it will lose some of its stickiness, its proteins and sugars will break down, thus changing its flavor and how it reacts when cooked again, etc. So day old rice and fresh rice are going to behave differently in a recipe, they aren’t the same ingredient, they don’t have the same properties. So something like egg fried rice, will have different flavor, different consistency, etc. using day old rice thats already been cooked vs. fresh rice. Which is better is a matter of opinion.
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