It's for Dinner

Perfect white rice recipe

Tags: rice steamed

A perfectly cooked bowl of white rice is deceptively simple. With only two required ingredients, it's either make it or break it. Computerized rice cookers have become quite popular in recent years, but our kitchen is free from uni-taskers and we'd rather have our counterspace is always at a premium. We cook our rice the old fashioned way--steamed on the stovetop.

Perfect white rice

We've cooked a lot of rice to find the best technique and we're happy to report it's quite simple. Rinsing the rice before cooking is the secret. Everything else being equal, un-rinsed rice is gummy and unappetizing.

You'll notice that we use less water than is traditional (if you read the back of the bag, you'll probably see 2 cups of water for every cup of rice). We like the texture more when using less water and since we rinse the rice before cooking it gets to the pot with some added water.

Recipe

Details

  • Servings: 4
  • Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 cup long-grain white rice
  • 1 1/4 cups water
  • (1/2 tsp kosher salt)

Instructions

  1. Wash the rice in cold water until water coming out is no longer cloudy. We typically do this in a mesh strainer, but a bowl works too.
  2. Remove as much water as you can from the rice and place into medium sauce pan with the measured water and salt (if you're using it).
  3. Bring to a boil on high, cover with a tight fitting lid and turn to low
  4. After 20 minutes turn off the heat and do not stir rice, let sit for 10 minutes
  5. Fluff with a fork and serve

Tips

  • If your rice sticks or burns to the pan ty using lower heat and make sure you're using a heavy bottomed pan. Thin pans heat unevenly and create hot spots which make for stuck and burned rice.
  • For added flavor use stock as the cooking liquid instead of water (just remember to not add salt as stocks are seasoned)
  • Save left over rice in the fridge, it's great for making fried rice later in the week
Posted on June 19th 2009