Gohan Plus

One takeaway from my decades in Japan is that I love rice, known there as gohan, and eat a lot of it, specifically Japanese short-grain white rice. Because of this level of consumption, I wanted to come up with an everyday pantry staple that would bring a little more nutritional value to the rice without making me feel that I was dutifully eating something worthy instead of what I actually wanted.

After a considerable amount of trial and error, this is the combination that made the most sense to my palate. It is my version of zakkokumai, Japanese multigrain rice, in which every day white rice is cooked together with a mixture of grains, seeds and legumes. There are countless possible combinations, one for every home cook, it often seems, and mine includes millet, mung beans, red lentils, amaranth, kaniwa, barley and farro, along with a piece of kombu.

The additions bring more nutritional variety to a bowl of white rice, particularly additional fiber, plant protein and a broader range of vitamins and minerals, while the combination of grains and legumes also provides a wider mix of amino acids. The millet, kaniwa and amaranth largely disappear into the rice, the lentils and mung beans soften, and the barley and farro retain a little texture. The kombu quietly contributes its savory depth in the background.

I experimented with both the ingredients and proportions before settling on this particular mixture. I wanted the end result to still recognizably be rice rather than a bowl of assorted grains held together by some rice, and this is where I ended up. It is soft, only slightly chewy, and interesting without being distracting, and I use it anywhere I would otherwise have used plain Japanese rice. Which is not to say that I do not make plain Japanese rice anymore. I often do, as there is really nothing like it. But I try to amp up my vitamins, minerals and fiber when I am being a good girl in the kitchen.

This makes a fairly large batch, deliberately. I keep it in my pantry and measure out what I happen to need at the time. By the way, as an unexpected bonus, please note that cold leftover cooked Gohan Plus can also be spread on a sheet pan with a little olive oil and roasted until crisp, which gives you an entirely different thing to do with it. I recently used it as a crunchy, nutty topping, a kind of savory rice and grain granola, to an utterly divine roast fall vegetable dinner salad, which I poetically called a Golden Hour Salad.

Consider this a starting point for your own rice mix. Use adzuki beans instead of mung beans. Use quinoa instead of kaniwa. Maybe flaxseed will work for you. Maybe a serving of flaked, dehydrated vegetables will be the secret ingredient in your mix. Maybe sesame seeds are what will make your version different than someone else's. Who knows?

2 cups Japanese short-grain white rice

1/3 cup hulled millet

1/4 cup split hulled mung beans

1/4 cup red lentils

2 Tbsps amaranth

2 Tbsps kaniwa

2 Tbsps pearled barley

2 Tbsps pearled farro

1 large piece of kombu broken into rough 2-inch shards (optional)

Combine the rice, millet, mung beans, red lentils, amaranth, kaniwa, barley and farro in a large airtight container and shake or stir very thoroughly to distribute everything evenly. Add the kombu to the top of the container. Store in the pantry until needed.

The smaller grains will inevitably work their way toward the bottom of the container, so give the mixture a very thorough shake or stir every time you use it. Otherwise the first few batches will contain all the big things and the final one will be approximately nine million grains of amaranth and kaniwa, all of which will navigate to your gumline rather than to your stomach. Trust me on this.

Use as needed in lieu of plain rice.

To cook one serving of this:

Measure 1/3 cup of the Gohan Plus mixture into a fine-mesh strainer and rinse thoroughly under cool running water until the water runs reasonably clear. You really do need a fine-mesh strainer here; the millet is small and the amaranth and kaniwa are positively determined to escape.

Transfer the rinsed mixture to your rice cooker and add 1/4 cup plus one teaspoon water. Put one of the small pieces of kombu on top if using along with a bay leaf and leave everything to soak for one hour.

Cook on the mixed-grain or multigrain setting if your rice cooker has one. If it doesn't, use the regular white-rice setting after the one-hour soak.

When the cooking cycle finishes, leave the rice cooker closed for another ten minutes. Remove and discard the kombu and the bay leaf, then use a rice paddle to gently turn the rice from the bottom and fold the grains together.

Rice cookers, and indeed brands of Japanese short-grain rice, are not all created equal, so consider the amount of water a starting point rather than immutable law. If your Gohan Plus is firmer or drier than you like, add a little more water the next time; if it is too soft, use a little less. There will be a bit of trial and error involved in getting this right, but I do believe the mix to be worth it.

Eat this with whatever dish you would usually pair with a bowl of plain rice and enjoy a dinner that will make you feel nutritionally virtuous, satiated, and somehow a little bit smug.