Tutorial: Perfect Rice Forever, or How to Cook Perfect Long-Grain Rice
There are plenty of good tutorials out there about how to cook various types of rice, if one looks. Trouble is, a lot of them are based on your already having a rice cooker. If you don’t have one (you poor person, you), a paragraph or two might be added about how to cook rice on the stovetop, or possibly in the microwave. Unfortunately, they’re usually not nearly as detailed as the ones about how to do it in a rice cooker.
So what are you meant to do if you don’t have a rice cooker? While I’ve used one when cooking at restaurants, I’ve never had one at home. I don’t cook rice every day, but I do cook it often enough that I buy it in 25 or 50 pound bags of our most used kind (as mentioned previously, I have several types of rice on hand at any given time) and have an airtight wheeled bin for it in my kitchen.
Follow the jump for exactly how to cook perfect long-grain rice (including jasmine and basmati) on your stovetop. In a covered pot. With water. It doesn’t get much simpler than this.
First rule: rice is for everybody. Rice is not exclusive; a telling fact regarding this is the fact that in several Asian languages, the common way to ask how someone is doing today often translates literally to something about whether or not they’ve eaten rice today. It’s that important. Generally speaking, other foods served with rice are accompaniments to the rice, not the other way around.
That’s as it should be, too. Rice is incredibly healthy—or it can be. Second rule: Converted rice doesn’t count. Rice—real rice—is elegant in its simplicity. It is grown and harvested and bagged up for our consumption with all vitamins intact, or possibly with some removed (if we choose white rice over brown). Why does it need to be taken a step further and refined so much that it loses nutritional value and taste? Because cooking rice is too complicated? It isn’t! It’s quite easy if you follow a couple of rules! You don’t even have to stand around and watch it, just measure properly, set a timer, and it will do its own thing while you go do something else! Overcomplicating things, quite frankly, sucks for everyone. Don’t do it.
Now that I’ve got that mini-rant out of my system, here’s the foolproof way to cook long-grain rice of all types, including jasmine and basmati. All you’ll need, as mentioned before, is a covered saucepan and some water. It helps if it’s non-stick, but it doesn’t have to be—just make sure you immediately soak your pot in some hot, soapy water after cooking rice in it if you’re using a pot that isn’t nonstick. Ready? OK!
To Wash Or Not To Wash?
The debate over whether or not to wash your rice before cooking has raged for longer than I’ve been alive, and will likely continue to rage into the future. I personally don’t usually wash my long-grain rice, although I may wash other types of rice on a case-by-case basis. My rice has never suffered ill effects because I do not wash it, and while I have not sent any of my rice for lab tests, I believe there is probably marginally more nutrition to be had with unwashed rice. Washing rice rinses away some of the starch your rice might have in the bag, but most rices today don’t have as much of a problem with this as they might once have done. I suspect the rice-washing practice developed out of necessity in those times, and has continued to this day as it has been passed down through generations—even though it’s probably no longer necessary.
If you notice that the long-grain rice you’re using seems to contain substances other than rice, you may want to wash it. Otherwise, I’d say you’re probably fairly safe in not washing it. Washing it may lead to it not sticking together well, but you want a certain amount of stickiness to your rice when you’re eating it. Even if you don’t eat with chopsticks, who wants all their rice falling all over their faces and down their shirts? Not me. I’m not talking about excessive stickiness—that’s only going to happen if you overcook the rice, which won’t happen if you follow these instructions.
You Will Need:
- Long-grain rice
- Dry measuring cup
- Tap water
- Saucepan with tight-fitting lid
- Fork
1. Measure the rice. I’ve got 1 cup here in my measuring cup, and I’m about to dump it in my saucepan. 1 cup of dry rice will turn into 2 cups when cooked.
2. Put the rice in the pan. Medium saucepan, as you can see. I’ve got a cover for it, too, which I’ll be using later. Try to make the rice fill the bottom of the pan evenly. It doesn’t have to be exact, just eyeball it and tilt the pot so the rice redistributes itself fairly evenly.
3. Measure the water. I use the method I was taught as a child, which is apparently the Asian finger method. (All my fellow Asian kids in the audience are now probably nodding their heads in recognition. Aww yeah.) To do this, stick your clean forefinger into the pot so that the tip just touches the top of the layer of rice. Now add tap water up to your first knuckle. If it’s jasmine or basmati, you can stop right at the bottom of your first knuckle; if it’s other long-grain rice, you can go just over your first knuckle. Don’t add butter, or oil, or salt, or anything else. Just water.1
4. Set the pot on the stove, burner on as high as it will go. Do not cover the pot at this point; instead, wait a few minutes until the rice and water begin to boil violently.
5. When the water is boiling violently, put the lid on the pot and turn the burner down to its lowest setting. Set your timer for 20 minutes and walk away.
6. When 20 minutes have elapsed, turn the burner off. Let the rice sit, covered, for 5 more minutes. Fluff with a fork. Dish it up and enjoy. Store leftovers for fried rice—if there are any leftovers, that is. 
- You can also measure the water with a cup, but it’s really not necessary once you learn the trick I’ve just taught you. If you want to measure, use a 1:1 ratio of water to the amount of rice you want to cook. The reason the finger method works no matter the amount of rice you use is that the water isn’t just sitting on top of the rice—it’s also going down into the rice as you measure it. It is possible that you may have less luck with this method if your hands are abnormally large, such as Asuka Kazama from Tekken. However, about 95% of people who try it should have success with this method. [↩]
Janaki
on January 25th, 2010 at 10:39 am
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