What to use instead of cooked rice
It depends entirely on what it's doing in the dish. Here's the job, what else does it, and what to skip.
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Neutral starch that soaks up sauce in a bowl or burrito
Cooked grains absorb liquid and stretch the filling, and the mild starch flavour keeps the heavily seasoned parts from taking over the whole bite.
Cooked quinoaRan out
1:1 cooked volume
Nuttier and faintly bitter unless you rinse it, with a popping texture. Holds up better in a wet bowl than rice does.
Cauliflower rice, dried out in a hot panRan out
1:1 by volume, cooked dry for 4 minutes
Releases water rather than absorbing it, so a burrito leaks unless you cook it dry and cool it first.
Soaked coarse bulgurRan out
1 cup bulgur + 1 1/2 cups boiling water, stand 25 min
Chewier and wheaty, and it drinks up sauce hard. Boiling it in a pot instead of soaking turns it gummy.
Cooked farroRan out
1:1 cooked volume
Distinctly chewy and nutty. It refuses to compact, so a burrito is harder to roll and holds less.
What doesn't work: Instant rice cooked to order. It is pre-gelatinised and has almost no structure left, so it turns to paste the moment it meets sauce or a hot wok.
Day-old grains that fry into separate pieces
Chilling firms the starch and dries the surface of each grain, so they stay separate in a hot pan instead of steaming into a single clump.
Fresh rice spread on a tray and chilledRan out
1 batch spread 1/2 inch deep, 30 min uncovered in the fridge
Gets most of the way there in half an hour. Still a little stickier than true day-old, so use a hotter pan and less oil.
Cooked and chilled quinoaRan out
1:1 cooked volume
Never clumps and fries in about two minutes. It browns rather than toasting, and it carries far less sauce.
Cold cooked short pasta, choppedRan out
1:1 cooked volume
Takes a hard sear and stays separate. Denser and chewier, so the same bowl eats a good deal heavier.
What doesn't work: Hot rice straight out of the cooker. The surface moisture steams instead of frying and the grains mash under the spatula into a wet ball.
Cooked rice grows Bacillus cereus quickly at room temperature. Chill it within an hour and reheat it once, to steaming.