Asian Food Network next to roast BBC for 'rice-rinsing' video

Jokes about BBC Food host Hersha Patel rinsing cooked rice with a colander in her recent recipe video are not letting up. Asian Food Network (AFN), well known for teaching consumers Asian recipes and cuisine, has decided to reinforce its prowess in Asian cuisine by publishing a short guide to the do's and don'ts of cooking rice. 

In the guide on Facebook, AFN said: "Don't rinse your cooked rice in water, remove the lid while the rice is cooking. Do wash your uncooked rice and add the correct amount of water." The post was done in collaboration with Fishermen Integrated and had 281 reactions, 27 comments and 89 shares at the time of writing.

In a statement to Marketing, Sylviane Bahr, marketing and communications director, Discovery Southeast Asia, said Asian Food Network is an open door on Asian food cultures. "Rice is such an essential staple in South East Asia that we thought these tips would be useful for the community," she said.

She added that the post was developed within the night, from identifying the right trend to retrieving what content it already had developed on the topic. "While creating that post, we thought about the challenges our community would often encounter while cooking rice. We hope that these types of tips and tricks will help everyone create delicious Asian-inspired home-cooked meals. This content fits right into our content strategy," Bahr explained.

Meanwhile, Fishermen Integrated's co-founder and ECD Adam Miranda, said the team loves doing this - creating content ideas that are trending, highly engaging, but more importantly, they are creative and entertaining. "We know the audience loves it too because meaningful conversations happen as a result. And it all links back to what the brand, AFN, stands for. Credit to our team of dedicated managers and creatives for recognising opportunities like these every day and acting super fast on them," he said.

Separately, Shopee Malaysia also recently poked fun at BBC Food's gaffe, referencing Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng's seven-minute reaction video on Patel's cooking method. Ng had criticised Patel for rinsing cooked rice with a colander in her recipe video for egg fried rice. He added: "How can you drain rice with colander? This is not pasta. I've never seen anyone drain rice."

Shopee then jumped in on the conversation via a Facebook post featuring an ad for a colander. The post was captioned: "Colanders are for rinsing the vegetables or other ingredients to fry your rice with, not to rinse the rice, especially not after you boil it." The post also added that this is not acceptable, at lest now how Asians do it. "Let's unite against cruelty against rice," Shopee said.

Patel has since taken to her personal Twitter account to address the public and call her way of cooking as "crimes" against rice. She added that there will be a collaboration between Ng and her soon.

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