'There were rocks in her rice.' - Why?

[Eric J in MN]

Does rice usually have rocks in it unless a food processor removes them?

Or did the North Koreans intentionally put rocks in Laura Ling's rice?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10589188

(Laura) Ling's sister said her sister was "a little bit weak" and it would take some time for her to speak about her captivity.

She said the family had four phone conversations with her sister during her captivity. "She's really, really anxious to have fresh fruit and fresh food ... There were rocks in her rice."

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. I've found pebbles in rice -

that's why you're always advised to rinse it and pick through it.

Not at all unusual......................

[Eric J in MN]

3. Where was this? Did you pick the rice? NT

NT

[Tangerine LaBamba]

8. Huh?

It was in my kitchen.

Did I pick the rice?

No, I picked THROUGH the rice, to make sure there were no pebbles, so no one would break a tooth during dinner...............

[canetoad]

10. I doubt that rocks would be collected during harvest

More likely while the grain was being transported or stored. Or maybe it was deliberate.

[alfredo]

17. I find rocks in beans all the time.

[NoSheep]

22. One of my fondest memories of my grandmother was watching her prepare food.

Shelling beans and peas. If we ever had dry beans or peas, they were always rinsed and picked over several times. Rocks were always present and the rotten floaters culled. A loving act from a simple woman. My friend gets wild rice from Minnesota. It takes quite a bit of care to prepare it clean. Nature. I know we've nearly forgotten it.

[alfredo]

25. A salamander in your spring means the water is clean.

[NoSheep]

26. Nice.

:)

[alfredo]

34. They only live in the cleanest water.

[comrade snarky]

37. I've heard that

Always seemed to me you'd be drinking salamander pee.

The difference between clean and wont kill you. :evilgrin:

[alfredo]

42. There are always some form of animal life is spring water, you just don't see

them. I'm an old cave crawler who has seen the blind fish salamanders and crayfish in those streams. I was raised on well water that was fed by a system of caverns.

Our house was next to a cemetery. My uncle was a city boy. He'd come out to see us from time to time. One day dad told him that we have well water and all that rain washes over the dead bodies and into the well. From then on, my uncle brought his own water.

[SoCalDem]

47. Yep..gotta soak the beans ( I do it over night)

and the baddies float..

Also, you have to discard the "soak-water", and re-rinse several times:)

My grandma always swore that the beans "release their gas" in the soaking, and if you re-used the water..well that;s where bean-farts come from :rofl:

[Eric J in MN]

12. Did you buy that rice in a US supermarket? NT

NT

[uppityperson]

19. I do buy it in USA supermarket and have found pebbles/small rocks in rice and beans

What finally got me checking it before cooking was the time I lifted the lid to check and found a reconstituted mouse turd on top of my steamed rice.

[NoSheep]

31. Ooooh...I just saw that plain as day.

:D

[uppityperson]

33. Did some fast thinking and didn't tell my dinner guests

hey, it was sterile by then, right? And I was 19 yrs old. And yes, have felt guilty since

[Maru Kitteh]

20. I have found small pebbles and grains of sand in my rice bought in Nebraska

Rice is a bulk agricultural product. Dirt, sand, and small pebbles may be found in it.

I would expect that to hold true times 10 in North Korea, and not necessarily on purpose.

[NoSheep]

30. Did you grow up in a silo?

Sorry...but that really is an amazing question for people who grew up cleaning their dry beans from the A&P.

[Doremus]

43. Obviously you've never cooked dried beans before.

Or, if you have, now you finally know what those hard things were that broke your teeth. :eyes:

[NoSheep]

44. Who me? I think you replied to the wrong post.

If not...the allusion to the silo had nothing to do with rocks and a lot more to do with blindness and isolation.

edited to add my response was to #42 when I asked if that person grew up in a silo..

[Doremus]

45. You're right --- so sorry.

:blush: :hug:

A good rant gone to waste. :rofl:

[NoSheep]

46. It's okay. I've done it too :-)

[Tangerine LaBamba]

36. Yes -

It seems to me that you're having a hard time believing that pebbles show up in rice.

Others have posted about finding pebbles in rice.

What, exactly, are you trying to establish?

[JVS]

40. Me too

[MADem]

2. Rocks will fill ya up....perhaps it is a food stretching technique?

I'm quite sure they weren't allowed to cook for themselves, otherwise they would have picked them out ahead of time.

[Warpy]

5. Quite possibly, although hard on the dental work

I've found them in brown rice, especially, back in the days when producers weren't cleaning it effectively.

The stones might also be bits from their polishing process, too, and not picked out by disinterested prison cooks.

[Eric J in MN]

7. What is the polishing process? NT

NT

[Warpy]

41. The bran is abraded off the rice grain

and it's not inconceivable that they use a process like tumbling semiprecious gemstones to do it in the countryside.

The advantage to removing the bran is that the grain then cooks more quickly, a distinct advantage in an area that has little fuel for cooking.

[MADem]

9. If you don't have much in the way of teeth, ain't nothin' but a thing! nt

[Art_from_Ark]

15. On very rare occasions, even the Japanese rice I eat will have a pebble

or two in a 5-kilogram bag

[Warpy]

39. I've never found any in Calrose

which is a Japanese strain of short rice now grown in the US. It's the only white rice I eat.

I'll find one very rarely in brown rice grown in the US.

[scheming daemons]

23. OR... the N Koreans are a bunch of sadistic assholes

[NoSheep]

29. They certainly are isolated. Homogeneous too.

Kinda like 'murkans would like to be if they could. Strong executive branch, and all, y'know. Heavily centralized white govenmunt.

[daninthemoon]

4. probably just not cleaned/processed enough. just from where it grew

[seabeyond]

6. they dont have the same food control we do i the u.s. you get whatcha get. bt

[Politicalboi]

32. Your right

I would rather eat rocks than salmonella. LOL!

[IcyPeas]

11. I've had rocks (or "hard bits")

in good old lentil soup. It can happen at the best of places....

[noamnety]

13. Yes - I've had it in lentils and other dried beans.

bought in US supermarkets, bagged. Haven't seen it in rice, but if it can be in the one, I'm sure it can be in the other.

[kestrel91316]

14. Sounds like they got served floor sweepings.

[Blecht]

16. A lot of farmers dry rice on the road

Rocks in the rice is a very common occurrence in poor Asian counties.

[NoSheep]

18. In Nepal, there were always small rocks in my food. Processed by hand labor.

I'm sure it hadn't been long out of the field and into the simple grass containers it was kept in. I heard that this afternoon. I doubt seriously that it was intentional. I was in the most hospitable land on the planet and there were still rocks in my food. These people also use a lot of hand labor, I would imagine. I don't think N Korea wants us thinking they are as "uncivilized" as that. The women would have never been released otherwise. Just one small grain of sand in food can really freak you out. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant. Just my 2 cents.

[scheming daemons]

21. Why? Because the N Koreans are a bunch of sadistic fuckwits... that's why....

Ask the Japanese who have been kidnapped and tortured by the North Koreans for years.

[NoSheep]

28. Ask the US too while you're at it! Children, for fuck's sake.

[miyazaki]

24. an item not even really worth mentioning.

will be very interesting when they speak for themselves about the entire ordeal.

[nadinbrzezinski]

27. Yes, there is, when you do not clean it

also this is a common tactic used with prisoners in insert authoritarian regime here. Also at times the food quality in US prisons (not the best examples of prison policies either) have problems with things like this.

[Hekate]

35. Like beans, it's a raw agricultural product. Even in the US we hve to pick over beans before cooking

Rice in the US is so refined that it normally has no foreign objects.

Perhaps the Korean harvesters were paid by the pound and tossed in small pebbles. Perhaps home cooks expect to pick over their raw rice the way we pick over raw beans. Perhaps the cooks were careless and didn't give a shit about prisoners.

I doubt it was deliberate as such -- it seems more like malicious neglect than malice with intent.

Hekate

[Loudmxr]

38. Wow! Some of you need to spend a little time in 3rd world countries.

My SO's family has a nice piece of property in Samar Philippines. Its currently under legal hassle with a brother but going from Leyte, an emerging 2nd world province, over one bridge and a hill into the destitute poverty of the province of Samar is gob smacking. And its all political. Because in Samar I had the best cel phone service available in the Ps.

Yeah you have to be careful what you eat in a subsistence community. Its good. But it ain't FDA approved.:smoke:

[Romulox]

48. We carefully sift our Californian produced rice before cooking.

Never found a stone, but have found a few "stems" or other woody objects over the years.

My guess is that the OP has never made rice that wasn't presealed in a plastic bag.

[Blue Diadem]

49. Yes, rice will have rocks in it. Destoning is part of the milling process.

DESTONING: Foreign materials introduced into the rice during harvest or handling that is basically the same size as a rice grain is removed from the grain flow in a gravity separator known as a destoning machine. As the stone or other more dense particle is heavier than the rice grains, the forced air flow through the machine causes the rice grains to float on a cushion of air just above the screen. This then allows the reciprocating screen to convey the more dense stones up the screens to a discharge chutes, thereby ensuring all stones are removed from the rice grains. Dust laden air is exhausted through to the central dust collection system further cleaning the rice grains before processing.

http://www.swedishrice.com/en/info.htm

-------------

When I was a kid, my Mom taught me to always check rice and beans for any foreign material. Even some 40 yrs later, I'll still find small things that slip through the process.

I suspect the rice given to the women was local, thus no milling process.