Important Differences Between White Rice and Parboiled Rice
Important Differences Between White Rice and Parboiled Rice
Many people usually confuse white rice with parboiled rice. Though, there are various important differences between both of these rice varieties.
What is White Rice?
White rice is a type of milled rice that goes through a procedure of removing the husks, bran, and germs. And due to this process, white rice carries a different flavour, firmness, and texture than parboiled rice.
There are certainly some benefits to this whole process, as milling the rice lengthens its storage life and stops the rice from spoiling too fast.
Additionally, the result of the milling process is white and shining grains. Nevertheless, this process also has a big disadvantage as the milling process can remove a few important nutrients from rice.
What is Parboiled Rice?
On the other hand, if we talk about parboiled rice, this type of rice goes through a whole different procedure of being partly boiled in its husk. This process consists of three stages:
- Soaking
- Steaming
- Drying
In contrast to white rice, the process from which parboiled rice goes through really boosts and increases its nutritional value, making parboiled rice almost the same as brown rice when it comes to health benefits.
Apart from affecting the nutritional values, the process of parboiling changes the texture of rice and it also becomes easier to polish by hand. And the result of this whole process is a transparent and less sticky type of grains.
Additionally, both white rice and parboiled rice fall into the category of long grain rice, that are easily available at long grain rice suppliers in India.
The following are some differences in their nutritional value, health benefits, and many other things:
Differences in Nutritional Values
As mentioned above, the processes which both parboiled rice and white rice go through, really affect their nutritional values. The procedure of parboiling increases nutrients within the rice, hence making parboiled rice a more nutritionally valuable option.
Not to mention, parboiled rice is a great source of fibre and minerals, including calcium, vitamin b6, and potassium. Also, most people generally get confused between parboiled rice and instant rice because they think parboiled rice is precooked rice.
However, the procedure for parboiling is not similar to pre-cooking. Besides, while precooking decreases its nutritional values, parboiling increases them.
Differences in Health Benefits
Relatively, parboiled rice is a better choice in terms of nutritional values, as well as health benefits. A cup of parboiled rice contains 2% of the daily suggested intake of minerals, and that is the reason why it is a great choice for a healthy diet.
Whereas, white rice loses most of its nutrition value while going through the milling process, so it ends up having less fibre and necessary minerals and vitamins. Hence, even though eating it would not hurt you in any way, white rice is not relatively beneficial in terms of nutrients. Basically, this type of rice has a lot of calories without having nutritious value.
As a matter of fact, both of these rice types are gluten-free in their natural form. Nonetheless, it is important for you to always check the packaging before buying your rice to make sure the manufacturer has kept it gluten-free and has not added any extra ingredients.
Therefore, parboiled rice is a better and healthier option, in terms of nutritional values, while white rice is a little less beneficial. Also, white rice is usually connected with risks of type 2 diabetes, but as long as you have it in controlled amounts, you should not face any kinds of severe risks. On the other hand, parboiled is good for diabetics.
Cooking Parboiled and White Rice
There is not much difference when it comes to cooking parboiled and white rice. However, no matter the way, they are cooked, the texture and taste of these two types of rice differ.
So, you can cook both parboiled rice and white rice in the usual manner, by using a rice cooker or a traditional pot.
While you can cook these two types of rice in the same manner, their characteristics differ significantly. Parboiled rice has better nutritional value because the process of parboiling increases the nutrients. While, on the other hand, white rice is not very beneficial as it carries a lot of calories with small nutritional values.
The grains of parboiled rice also vary in texture, as they are more transparent instead of white, and they are less sticky too. So, if you do not like sticky rice, then parboiled rice is a good type of rice to try. Not to mention, it makes for a delicious ingredient in various dishes globally, even though white rice tends to be used more commonly.
Therefore, it is up to you to choose your favourite long grain rice from both of these types of rice, and buy them from the best rice supplier in India.