How do you cook perfect rice?

Tell me the details like what makes yours perfect, why, and your cultural influence if any. I mean, rice is totally different with Mexican, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Persian food just to name a few. It is not just the spices or sauces I'm mostly interested in. These matter too. I am really interested in the grain variety and specifically how you prep, cook, and absolutely anything you do after. Don't skip the cultural details that you might otherwise presume everyone does. Do you know why some brand or region produces better ingredients, say so. I know it seems simple and mundane but it really is not. I want to master your rice as you make it in your culture. Please tell me how.

So, how do you do rice?

livus,
livus avatar

I use basmati rice and I follow the recommendations in this scientific journal article

Improved rice cooking approach to maximise arsenic removal while preserving nutrients. Menon et al., 2021.

It makes perfect rice that's also better for you.

omginbd,

That's interesting, I've always planted my flag in basmati rice, it's the best, but I didn't know it was a vector for arsenic consumption.

livus,
livus avatar

All rice can be a vector for arsenic consumption, but actually, basmati tends to have lower levels of arsenic than other rice.

Which is great for us basmati lovers!

Killer_Tree,

3-5-2-2 Brown Rice - Cooked in the oven

This works great to make a batch of rice on the weekend to have plenty to use as a base for various meals throughout the week.

  1. Preheat oven to 350.
  2. Get a large casserole dish.
  3. Rinse 3 cups of brown rice and add to dish.
  4. Add 5 cups of hot or at least warm water to dish (I just microwave it in a pyrex measuring cup before pouring in.)
  5. Add 2 Tablespoons of butter
  6. Add 2 teaspoons of salt
  7. Cover dish with aluminum foil and put it in the oven for an hour.

Congratulations you now have a giant dish of tasty brown rice, you absolute rockstar.

nevernevermore,
nevernevermore avatar

Cooked in the oven

wow i have to try this. this would probably work with black rice as well

donio,

I love rice! My perfect rice is long grain jasmine cooked slightly al dente. I rinse it several times and then use a rice cooker with slightly less water than the lines indicate. Let it sit a few minutes before fluffing it.

TheOtherJake,

Do you notice a slightly nutty flavor with this technique?

donio,

Not that I noticed, only the texture and aroma of the rice.

petroskoi,
@petroskoi@sopuli.xyz avatar

I just make sure I wash the rice enough times and put the correct amount of rice and water to my rice cooker. And when it's done I let it set for like 10 minutes at least before I fluff it.

Also buy better quality of rice if I want a better end product.

But there are many ways to cook rice nicely, like persian steamed rice or at work we got some really nice rice with the oven.

dynamism,

My method is similar to a few other people in this thread, but thought I’d write a really verbose essay about it all. I love rice, man.

My parents are from Hong Kong. For me, rice is simple — cooked with just water. No salt, no stock, no veggies. There is a time and place for that, but I’ll go to Texas for good mexican rice.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, a rice cooker is the easiest way to get perfect rice. Still, just like knowing how to do dishes by hand or how to mince garlic with a knife not a press, making rice in a pot is something I take a silly amount of pride in. (And I find it marginally faster — 20 min vs 30-40min)

Add rice and water to a non-stick pot. I have made rice in a stainless steel pot, but would not recommend it. If you cook your rice perfectly, cleanup is mildly annoying. A minute over, and it’s a bitch. If you burn the rice? God help you. (My tip? A one hour soak to loosen things up.) Non-stick is way more forgiving.

The proportion of rice to water here is KEY. If I were less lazy, I would measure out how much I use. But frankly, I never touch my measuring cups in the kitchen anyway, unless I’m baking. The best tip I can give you is something my mom taught me. Stick your index finger so it’s hovering right above the rice, then fill the pot with water up to your first knuckle-joint. I wish I had more precise numbers to give you, but I think they’d be useless rather than instructive. The amount of water you add varies depending on the type of rice, the diameter of your pot, and the amount of rice you put in. I promise you though, as you keep making rice, you’ll nail down the ratio.

Too much water and the rice will be gummy. It will have the consistency of a soft cheese. This is pretty much one of the worst sins you can commit in the kitchen. At this point, salvage the batch by making congee with it.

Too little water and the resulting rice will be puck-like in the pot. The grains will stick to itself and generally feel tacky in the mouth. This is hard to do as long as you add water above the level of rice. As a general rule: err on the side of less water rather than more.

Turn on the stove. The goal here is just to get the water boiling. If you’re impatient and hungry like I am, and the rice is the last thing standing between you and digging into a delicious curry/stir-fry/chicken and broccoli leftovers, then blast that shit with as much heat as you can, and put the lid on your pot. Don’t worry about anything burning. The water should insulate the temperature of everything in the pot until it starts to boil. Do not, under any circumstances, leave the pot unattended at this step if you are an impatient pot blaster. You will ruin your rice.

Immediately, once the water boils, turn the stove to the lowest setting possible. In the previous step, we put a lid on the pot to help the water boil faster, but in this step, it keeps the pot insulated and the water boiling. The water will continue to simmer and cook the rice. You let this sit until…

You don’t see water in the pot. When you look at the rice it should look slightly moist, not wet or soggy. When this happens, kill the stove. Next, just let it sit for 10 minutes. LEAVE THE LID ON. Under the lid, something magical is happening. The moisture from the rice is evaporating into steam, cooking the rice even further. Excess moisture is condensing on top, dripping back down, and then evaporating again. This step will ensure that the any extra moisture disappears, leaving the rice clump-free. Remember: just like a good steak, a perfect pot of rice requires a little rest.

This entire process should take around 20 minutes. Take off the lid and stir the rice with a fork. Ideally, nothing sticks to the bottom, and the rice is beautiful and fluffy and separates grain by grain. (This is made easier if you wash the rice beforehand, which lowers starch content overall, but who has the time?!)

Clean the pot immediately to minimize starchy stickiness. Enjoy your rice. Leftovers can go in the fridge and make great fried rice after a day. Alternatively, the microwave is a perfect method for reheating old rice, as it resteams the rice from the inside out

TheOtherJake, (edited )

You are my rice hero. This is where I want to be and what I have been trying to achieve. No clump, no goo perfection. You make your ancestors smile.

effingnerd,

Rinse rice, cook in boiling water until al dente (10ish minutes for me), drain well, return to the still hot pot to stream off for a minute, then serve.

Tldr cook it like it's pasta.

zesty,

I find it's hard to avoid the rice being a bit wet with this method, and it's also very easy to overcook it. It's super easy though, so I usually do it this way anyway.

effingnerd,

I don't find it to be too wet, personally. I think a minute or two sitting in the hot pan after draining it helps to alleviate this.

Gork,
@Gork@beehaw.org avatar

Add a small handful of cumin seeds to your batch. It imparts a wonderful aroma and taste to it for such a simple addition.

l4sgc,

I have a wheat allergy so I eat a lot of rice. I wanted the best rice cooker and got one from Zojirushi that uses a microcontroller with fuzzy logic to sense and compensate for if there is slightly too much or too little water. It does take noticeably longer for it to cook the rice, but it comes out perfect every time. It also has different modes for white rice, brown rice, semibrown rice, and rice porridge. The white rice setting is also perfect for quinoa, although for quinoa the water ratio is 1:2 instead of following the marked lines on the pot.

For rice porridge: I'll season with garlic salt and ginger, and cook it with onion and black mushroom. Serve with lime and jalopeno.

For quinoa: I like to substitute 25% of the quinoa with millet, and cook it with Consommé, golden flax seed, and lemon.

For brown rice: diced or shredded carrot works really well since the brown rice cooks for longer. I'll usually season with garlic salt, ginger, cumin, and curry powder.

For white rice: it normally has to be plain to add to something else like curry or a stir-fry, but my favorite white rice dish is cooking it with lots of bok choi, season with salt, fresh ginger, white pepper, sesame oil.

haxe11,

I haven't researched rice cookers yet but have been sort of interested in one for a while. Are there any that are comparable to Zojirushi that would be worth considering, or is that the one to you?

tburkhol,

Standard rice cooker uses magnetism to turn off. The steel bowl loses its magnetic attraction when it gets hot - like 400 oC - and it can't get that hot when there's water. Basically, they go full blast until the water boils off, then shut down. As long as the cooker is pretty full, the residual water/steam in the rest of the rice will bring the whole bowl back to 100 oC pretty fast and rehydrate any of the bottom layer that got crispy. If you run a conventional rice cooker under-loaded, you're more likely to get stuck/burned bottom.

I have a cheap, 4 cup rice cooker, but I usually make just 1 cup at a time. Unplug it after 7-12 minutes and it won't burn. I're pretty forgiving. I've used rice cookers from the little 4-cup to big 5-pound commercial cookers. Rice, water to the fingernail/1st joint, go. It's amazing. If you cook rice regularly, just get one.

haxe11,

But which one? What's a "standard" or "conventional" rice cooker? Is Zojirushi considered one of these? I haven't gotten one b/c the options are overwhelming to me. I'd love to narrow it down to 2 or 3 recommended options and then see which one I like best.

l4sgc,

Honestly I didn't really think too much about it, I used to use a simple on-off rice cooker but it kept on burning and sticking on the bottom. I saw an article that said Zojirushi is the best and the rice is the same consistency from top to bottom, and it completely worked as advertised. Now we have a Zojirushi water boiler and steel waterbottles as well, all their stuff is so high quality.

haxe11,

Well that's pretty high praise for that brand, at least. Thank you for answering my question.

blueskiesoc,

The Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy Rice Cookers cost about $200. I picked one up at a thrift store for...drum roll please...$8. I love it too. Nothing else to add, I just love telling that story.

l4sgc,

Great find! Best I've done was find a perfectly good table next to the dumpster lol

TheOtherJake, (edited )

What are your thoughts on bok choi versus cabbage? I have been testing how different fresh and precooked vegetables alter the texture of fried rice. I usually use a medium or large cheese grater to get my fresh vegetables small enough to sauté quickly. I can size carrots to cook well in the same amount of time as a finely chopped onion (between 5-8mm square onion chunks/around 5mm × 15mm × 1mm carrot). The same grater with cabbage produces a thin almost shredded size, but this needs about 1.5 times longer to sauté well. I kinda like the texture it adds the few times I've tried it recently, but it isn't really worth the extra effort for fried rice.

I typically do half an onion, green onion, 8-10 cloves of garlic and an equivalent amount of ginger, with some carrot sautéed, then I add precooked broccoli stocks (I wouldn't eat otherwise) in a small chop, a bit of left over meat, any other left over veggies, and a half bag of frozen green peas.

What would you add/change to make this more interesting? I've thought about trying different beans.

I also often make rice with a few handfuls of roasted mixed nuts (peanut, almond, cashew, pecan, Brazil) and a handful of mixed raisins. This is half inspired by some rice at an old Persian restaurant I frequented. It is a really good rice mix to combine with some fresh fish. At some point I'll probably try using this in a fried rice, but I'm skeptical where this experiment goes. I'm also curious about soy sauce alternatives. I use the pan stock from whatever meat I've cooked recently, or a small amount of canola oil. Any suggestions are welcome.

l4sgc,

What interesting questions, I'll start with a suggestion for an addition: mushrooms! I think they'll really help to bring out the umami of the dish, and there are so many different types with variations of flavor and texture: I add portabella mushrooms to risotto, king oyster to soups and stir-frys, enoki is also really good in soup, black mushrooms are good in anything... I'll just grab a few random varieties every time I'm at the store.

If the seasoning feels lacking try adding some acidity (lemon, lime, or rice vinegar), white pepper, and/or curry powder.

Also I'm not great at estimating dimensions, especially now that I'm trying to think in metric units, but I think when I saute things my cuts are considerably larger to preserve more of the texture of the ingredients. I'll only shred the carrots if I'm cooking them with the rice in the rice cooker, otherwise I'll go for something like this and have the onion julienned instead of diced, cabbage in like 1 inch squares, baby bok choi leaves whole. Oh also I feel like the baby white bok choi is better for cooking in the rice cooker, but the baby green bok choi is better for sautes.

Also choy-sum is like my new favorite vegetable but I just normally have it on its own, as opposed to bok choi, cabbage, or brocolli which I normally saute with other things. I'll also usually cook gai-lan on its own, as well as green beans, asparagus, and brussels sprouts. Since green beans need so much time and heat to cook, I'll normally use snow pea pods or sugar snap pea pods instead if I'm working with a mix of veggies.

For brussels sprouts I cut them in half and saute them face down on high heat until they fully caramelize to a golden brown, then flip them on their backs and add a tiny bit of water so they steam just enough to cook through. You don't want to boil them or steam them too much or it will create bitter notes.

My curry will always have onion, carrot, mushroom, and cauliflower. Daikon, cabbage, yamaimo/nagaimo, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts, are also good additions. For lentils I'll usually cook them with onion, mushroom, carrot, celery, and tuscan kale. I prefer them to still have some texture but my wife prefers it as a soup instead. Oh and I forgot to mention I'll usually also pair the quinoa with sauted spinach, kale, and bell pepper.

TheOtherJake,

Thanks for the shopping list to try out! Lots of great ideas here.

Gatsby,

Oh hell yeah my time to shine,

I make a large quntity of fried rice once every 3 or 4 days, then portion it out for multiple meals.

So first off, I use a rice cooker. I take 3 cups of raw rice, rinse it off, and fill the water up a half inch over the rice level. I add beef bouillon, a healthy amount of garlic powder, onion powder, msg, and pepper. Mix into the water as well as you can.

Let the rice cook, don't take the lid off once it starts. then let it sit in the fridge at least over night.

Then the next day, I cut up bacon into small bits, and cook it in my wok. Depending on how healthy I'm feeling, I either cook it until the fat is gone then drain the fat, or cook it until it's still soft but cooked thoroughly. Put the bacon on a paper plate with a paper towel on it to soak up extra fat, then in the wok (if you drained the fat put in oil) scramble some eggs in the bacon fat. Once it's scrambled, put in the rice and the bacon, cook it until it starts to seem 70% cooked. If it starts to stick put in cooking oil or butter depending on preference. Then I mix in two bags of 12oz mixed frozen vegetables. When those are thawed but not cooked, generously pour in soy sauce, more garlic powder, onion powder, and msg. Done!serve in a bowl and around here they sell bottles labeled 'yumyum sauce,' top with that and mix in. Otherwise mix up some spicy mayo with teriyaki sauce and use that

TheOtherJake,

Thanks for sharing. You're doing some things differently than me. I make close to a week's food at once with a bunch of meat, veggies, and rice all in the oven at the same time. It is budget friendly, relatively low effort, and healthy. I've been playing around with how I do the rice. This is the real reason for my post here. I'm looking for the different techniques that alter the final texture. I think I have a good grasp of that now. The main factors are presoaking, briefly sautéing the dry rice before cooking, the extent that the rice is washed of starch dust before cooking, the timing of when the water is fully evaporated, the total cooking time, and if the rice is fluffed after cooking.

From my own fried rice experiments, slightly undercooking rice intended for fried rice, along with slightly less water, and then cooking a bit longer with a bit more water during the fried rice stage, will result in a slightly nutty flavor and texture that can be interesting, at least with Jasmine rice. I often also add a package of quick microwave brown rice which is like 1:5 of my Jasmine from the oven. This improves overall texture too.

I typically fry with the pan stock left over from cooking whatever meat of the week I have and that meat goes in as well. I mostly use the same veggies I made for the week but chop up the cooked stalks from broccoli as the main vegetable. I start with fresh diced garlic, ginger, and green onions and don't use any other spices. I do a couple of watered down eggs quickly sloshed around a hot wok to cook a thin layer just before adding my rice and the fry I made and removed before the eggs. I typically add enough soy sauce to easily unstick any egg that remains.

Your idea of adding an extra sauce is completely new to me. Spicy mayo and teriyaki sauces mixed sounds terrifyingly fascinating.

Rockslide0482,

South Louisiana and we grow (and eat) a lot of rice out this way; my primary rice is locally grown (usually Cajun Country) long grain rice. If there's a need, I'll do basamati, jasmine, sushi, etc. but I don't always have those in stock in my pantry. I would get value from the $$ and space used by a rice cooker, but I just cook it in a pot on the stove. Always salt in the rice, sometimes I'll swap water for stock, but typically not.

I'm usually pretty "lazy" about my rice cooking. Most of the time I'll go just shy of 2:1 water-rice ratio. Boil water, throw in rice, cook ~20min. I usually forget to set a timer so I just keep an eye on it as I'm typically cooking other stuff at the same time. When done, stir up with a fork and cover until I'm ready to eat. Usually that ends me up with rice good for gumbo, gravies, or any other "sauce on top of rice" dishes (etouffee, curry, courtboullion, etc.). Making other dishes where you don't necessarily want the rice to stick together, different types of rice or have different consistency I may have to use a different method.

If making a pilaf or something equivalent (Mexican rice, etc.) I'll throw some oil, fry the dry/uncooked rice, add a bit of garlic, then definitely stock instead of water. Extra seasonings depending on what I'm cooking.

I started getting big ol bags of rice, but those are harder to deal with on a day-to-day basis, so I have one of those OXO pop top containers I'll fill with rice and then I can pretty easily pour that into a measuring cup.

darknyght00,

Wash it. This is the most important step, everything else is secondary

dustywinter,

Washing makes such a huge difference!

But don't just fill and drain. Get your hand in there and sift the rice to add some friction.

You will see how cloudy the water gets!

FocusedFranklin,

Make sure to buy good rice. I decided to get the store brand rice. It's just rice, right? Wow there is a noticeable difference in taste, also I got sick of picking random black things out of it while I was washing it.

davefischer,

I love sticky rice. You're supposed to steam it, but I just soak it for 40 minutes and then cook it in a rice cooker. Comes out alright.

mustyOrange,

For plain white rice, I just use a rice cooker with basmati and put in my soy sauce and the like.

For fried rice, ALWAYS let it sit in the fridge over night after steaming it, and be sure to break it up as much as possible before frying it.

avantgeared,

You don't need a rice cooker. Just use a regular pot. I never wash/rinse the rice unless there is significant visible trash in it. The only variable factor is the kind of rice you are cooking. Take basmati for example. That long grain white basmati is really great. Put rice in pot and cover it with one inch of water. Put lid on and put pot on heat to boil. When it boils turn heat down to low. Lift lid after about ten minutes. If grains look cooked and the pile of rice is puffed up then it is done. Serve and enjoy. If it is brown basmati use same method but put slightly more water in the pot. I never measure the water, just check to see that it looks like one inch in depth and add more or pour off extra as needed. This works just fine. Other options include adding oil and/or vinegar (like rice or suchi vinegar). I never add salt but that is also an option. Adding oil does make it more interesting as does vinegar. Long/medium/short brown rice, brown or white basmati, jasmine are all cooked the same way. The Asian brown, black, red rice would be cooked more carefully to make sure it is fully cooked and not scorched. A cast iron pot or pressure cooker can also be used, method is same as previously described and with rice to water ratio. It doesn't matter what size pot you use, always add one inch of water above the rice, a little more for brown/unpolished. It is usually better to add less water than more and use lower heat and longer cooking times. This produces a delicious just-barely-done rice, particularly good with white basmati (they are really long grained when cooked). Cooking rice is easy and can produce near perfect or perfect results with little effort.

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