Experiment 2A: Carrots up Close

SPECIAL NOTE: Experiment 2 is my first time making a dish of plov. I have divided up the description of Experiment 2 into multiple parts. Each part discusses a different ingredient and how it was prepared. This part is "Experiment 2A" and is all about the carrots.

When you consider plov, it looks so simple. Just carrots, rice, meat, and onions. For a little added flair, you can add the spice "cumin" (kind of a Russian tradition), or some raisins or some saffron (probably a little Persian influence there). But your basic plov is just four ingredients. That's it.

So, in Experiment 1, we considered the rice. Now, here in Experiment 2, we continue our scientific quest and take a close look at the carrots. There are so many questions you could ask about carrots.

My number one question is why are all the carrots the same size? It just doesn't seem natural. The name on the bag, "Bunny Luv", just doesn't seem very natural either.

I have to wonder how they get every single carrot in the bag to be almost exactly 5.0 centimeters in length. An all the diameters fall within a very narrow tolerance as well. I can't imagine what kind of farm produces such uniform carrots. It almost seems alien.

It turns out that the ultimate source of these uniform carrots is Grimmway Farms. It appears that Mr. Grimm was instrumental in introducing so called "baby carrots" to the marketplace.

One of the challenges associated with these carrots is that it take a lot of time to cut them up because you can only get about four pathetic pieces from these alien carrots.

And you have to be very careful not to cut your fingers when working with such small objects and a sharp knife. After some experimenting, I found I could get four respectable pieces from each Grimm's carrot. I have a feeling that these four pieces are still too big for a good plov.


In the end, after a lot of cutting, I was able to generate approximately 800.0 mL of chopped carrots. These I set aside for later use in my first real plov experiment. More regarding that fiasco will be posted later.

Experiment 1: Calibration of Uncle Ben's Rice

Taking a scientific approach the plov problem requires standardization of ingredients, both the source of the ingredients and their proper proportion. Where I live, one readily available source of rice is from a fellow named Uncle Ben.

Where I live, Uncle Ben packages his rice in plastic bags, each holding 907.0 grams of purportedly whole grain brown rice. The bag extols the benefits of the enclosed rice, stressing that the product is both a natural source of fiber (so is tumbleweed, but I don't eat that) and naturally low in fat (just like arsenic) and cholesterol free (just like gasoline).

On the back side of Uncle Ben's rice package, there are simple instructions for simple people. For every 1.00 cups of dry rice, just mix with 2.25 cups of water, and optionally, with 2 tablespoons of butter. We're not going to be adding butter to our plov (because it will be greasy enough on its own), so we are going to just go with the rice and water.

To the scientific mind, all of this talk about "cups" is very confusing. A scientist prefers to work with the metric system. I instantly encounter a point of confusion when converting from cups to milliliters (mL). I have one cup in my kitchen that assures me that 1 cup equals exactly 250 mL. I have another cup in my kitchen that states that 1 cup equals 236.64 mL.

My gut instinct tells me that there is absolutely no way that the French (who invented the metric system) and the English (who dislike the French) could have possibly agreed on such a convenient conversion factor as 1 cup equals 250 mL. After further investigation, it appears there really is no accepted standard. So, just to make things as complex as possible, I'm going to use the least convenient conversion factor, namely, that one cup equals 236.64 mL.

And to make the whole experience feel more scientific, I'm going to make the rice in a large Pyrex beaker that I obtained especially for making plov. The advantage of using a beaker is that you can easily see what is going on inside the cooking vessel. They also just look cool sitting there on your stove, don't they?

Safety Note: This 2000mL beaker is brand new and has never been used in a chemistry laboratory. I also took the time to clean it by boiling soapy water in it prior to first use.

So, translating the simple instructions on the back of Uncle Ben's rice package into more precise metric instructions, it appears that the proper way to make rice is to combine 236.64 mL of dry rice with 532.44 mL of water.


Here is a record of what happened during my first experiment with Uncle Ben's rice:

17:01 To a 2000 mL beaker is added 236.64 mL of Uncle Ben's Whole Grain Brown Rice and 532.44 mL of tap water. The beaker (without any cover) is placed over "high heat" on the front burner of a Maytag stove.

17:10 Beaker contents having achieved a full boil, the heat is reduced to just above the "low" setting on the Maytag stove so that contents of the beaker can continue to "simmer" for a while. A watch glass is placed on top of the beaker to provide a cover. (Okay, so it isn't a watch glass, just a small plate I found in my kitchen.) The spout of the beaker provides a small opening so that the heated system remains open. (Important safety tip: Never heat a closed system).

17:36 Contents of beaker appear to be nearing the end point of the reaction. Very little water is now visible above the level of the rice. Beaker (still covered) is removed from the heat and allowed to sit for a while.

17:59 Contents of beaker are examined and found to be a bit too moist and mushy. Next time around, we'll have to try either a bit less water or a bit longer simmering.

18:00 Contents of beaker are placed on a plate and then covered with some leftover shrimp creole that I made a few days ago. Central Asia will have to wait on New Orleans tonight.

The Quest for Perfect Plov

The purpose of this blog is to record for posterity my personal quest to create a perfect plov entree. I will be taking a scientific approach to this problem, documenting each step carefully, and hopefully arriving at a dish that would be acceptable in both the West (Europe and the Americas) and by the true plov practitioners of Central Asia.

So what is plov?

It is basically a dish made from rice, carrots, onions, and meat (usually lamb, sometimes beef, preferably with a lot of fat). The ingredients are assembled in layers for cooking: meat/onion mixture on the bottom, chopped carrots in the middle, and rice on the top. After cooking, the entire stratified ensemble is inverted for presentation, resulting in a layer of meat on top of a layer of carrots on top of a layer of rice.

Authentic Central Asian plov recipes are notoriously greasy/oily by modern Western standards. It is often eaten with bare hands, resulting in a mingling of greases and oils from the cooked meat and from the plov partaker's hands that is supposed to enhance the overall flavor of the dish.