I'm in the UK. I make a ton of Japanese food and probably eat rice 4-5 days a week (normally twice a day). I'm trying to phase out eating white rice and instead eat brown rice as my everyday type; normally I eat Koshihikari but I'm concerned about its high glycemic index since I'm eating it so often (plus the extra fibre from brown rice is not unappreciated).
I buy basically all my ingredients at my local asian store, but while they have a ton of really good authentic ingredients they don't have a great brown rice selection (only brown jasmine and some Yutaka brand 'semi-polished' short grain which is just okay), so I've been looking online to buy some brown Japanese rice. And I don't know if it's just the internet complicating things excessively, but I just cannot figure out what I'm even supposed to be looking for now.
There are innumerable types of Japanese short grain rice, and there seem to be a half dozen types of brown rice on top of that, seemingly differing based on the way they're milled? And everyone seems to categorise them differently. Some articles I've found (here's an example) seem to talk about genmai as if it's a particular cultivar of rice seperate from the likes of Japonica and Koshihikari, but surely you could buy a brown rice variant of either of those two, since white rice is essentially just brown rice that's been milled a lot more?
This article from JOC outlines various types of rice based seemingly on the way they've been milled, without mentioning anything about cultivars. Am I right in thinking that the cultivar (japonica, Koshihikari, Hitomebore, etc.) is just the type of rice plant, and the "brown rice type" (Haigamai, Hatsuga-genmai, etc.) is then the way in which it's milled/prepared?
All I want is a basic brown rice variant of something like Koshihikari or Japonica, just something I can eat a bunch of as a basic carbohydrate. There seem to be a million variants of "brown rice that's been treated in a weird way to make it more like white rice" apparently for people who don't like brown rice, but I can't find just plain old brown japanese rice anywhere, not in my city, nor online. Am I just confusing myself with all of this? Is there a really simple bag of rice I should be looking out for? What are other people eating as an everyday brown Japanese rice?
by RequestableSubBot