Rice cooking tips
A culinary mainstay the world over, rice is the most versatile of the commodity crops. From the traditional to the exotic, it excels in dishes both savory and sweet, in Asia, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, the Middle East.
It’s also one of the easiest foods to cook. With the exception of brown rice, most varieties take less than 20 minutes. Infusing rice with flavor is very easy, since it can absorb liquids such as stocks, broths, milk, and wine.
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Many home cooks forget to rinse their rice before cooking, but doing so will ensure light, fluffy, discrete rice grains on your plate. Rinsing removes the starch coating on the rice grains that contributes to stickiness and clumping. Well-rinsed rice will be more forgiving when you’re still fine-tuning the cooking time and liquid quantity for a particular rice variety or recipe.
Prior to cooking, pour your measured rice into a large bowl or pan, and add water until about an inch of water covers the rice. Stir and massage the rice with your fingers, and the water will quickly become milky in color. This is the excess starch from the surface of the rice grains, suspended in the water. Pour the water off carefully, over a strainer if necessary, to avoid losing any rice down the drain. Rinse and repeat until the water no longer clouds up when the rice is stirred. Drain it one last time, and your rice is ready to cook. Three to four rinses will typically do the job. I don’t always do this step, but it does ensure clump-free rice.
Throughout Latin America, rice is often fried or toasted in fat before adding water to the mix, as illustrated in the Mexican Rice recipe in this course. The frying takes more work, but put a bowl of plain steamed rice next to a bowl of fried Mexican rice, and the latter will easily take the figurative cake for both flavor and texture.
Most Asian cuisines employ an absorption method, a careful formula whereby the rice is steamed or boiled with a measured amount of water, until all the water is absorbed or vaporized, and no draining is done. We use this method for a majority of the rice recipes in this course.
There is also what I call the “Pasta Method” for cooking rice. Measure your rice, and bring a pot of water to boil – say, one quart of water per cup of rice. Once the water is boiling, add the rice, stir, and cook uncovered for five to ten minutes. Use a slotted spoon or fork to sample the rice for doneness, and when tender, simply drain the rice in a fine mesh colander. Then toss with butter, salt, herbs, and other seasonings.
Because this method uses a great deal of water, most of which gets drained away, the preliminary rinsing is not needed. But it does not economize on either water or heat, so we have favored the more precise and efficient absorption method for most of the rice recipes in this course.
We favor simple, multi-purpose kitchen tools, but if you make rice a large part of your diet, a dedicated rice cooker may prove well worth the space it takes up on your countertop. In a small but busy kitchen, even a simple rice cooker frees up one burner on your stove and frees you from having to immediately attend to a timed process.
At the other end of the spectrum, a Korean automated pressure cooker can put a little Blade Runner in your homestead kitchen. Not only does it make excellent rice, but a cheerful woman will regale you with a short, scratchy recording in Korean (is she announcing the imminent departure of mass transit to the off-world colonies?) just before the steam shoots forth with an industrial hiss… followed by a few chipper choral notes to announce that your rice is piping hot, al dente, and ready to eat.
(See the forthcoming Equipment section for specific rice cooker recommendations.)
For Infants
Rice makes an excellent starter food for infants transitioning to more solid food, and deserves special consideration in your food storage plan if you are in the childbearing years or plan to help someone who is.
While we prefer to feed our children a diet made up of whole foods, we have found that brown rice is so high in fiber that you may find it somewhat less than ideal if your child is still in diapers.