Chinese Stir Fry: Rice vs. Rice Noodles

I love a good stir fry. Because, I mean, who doesn't?  The question I sometimes ask myself though is, should I use rice noodles or rice? Let's settle this once and for all!

Ease of preparation:

I have rice cooker. It's amazing. I love it. I wrote a song about it, it's that awesome.

If you don't have one of these amazing contraptions, rice cookers let you make perfect rice 99.99% of the time with no stirring or straining. Rice in. Water to the line. Click. Cook. When it's done it even keeps it warm. So basically if I'm hooking up a stir fry, I can set it up before I get chopping and it'll be ready when I'm done. Sweet!

Of course...rice noodles are also pretty quick on the cook up. I literally boil the kettle and pour hot water on top of vermicelli style noodles and they're done. You have to drain off the excess, but it's pretty flipping easy.

It's a close call but I'm giving the edge to the rice because the rice cooker means that I my rice won't go cold if there's a delay. Without a rice cooker, I would say that this one goes to the rice noodles.

Munchability:

With chopsticks, this is easy: noodles. End of. And even with a fork I think you're still more likely get most of your meal in your face and less on the floor with noodles.

One all.

Tastiness - the tie breaker:

In general, rice noodles are a bit like tofu, they taste like whatever you cook them in. This is great with a tasty sauce. Rice on the other hand can lend a whole new dimension to your average stir fry. Don't limit yourself to Uncle Ben's, jasmine, basmati, Thai fragrant, wild, and brown rice will each bring a different party to your palate. There are apparently more than 35,000 different types of rice grown in the world. That' s a lot of grain. While there are lots of different types of noodle - wheat, rice, potato, egg, yam - you generally only come across one type of rice noodle in various shapes. The winner, for best stir fry cooker upper, must therefore be...rice.

Congratulations for being yummyful.