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?
Rice cooker. Seriously, even the shittiest $20 rice cooker is heaps more convenient than manually boiling rice.
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
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.
I’ve been cooking and eating rice for 35 years.
Buy a Japanese rice cooker.
Read their included english manual.
Don’t skip the instructions on washing the rice, wash the rice properly and follow the water line.
Perfect riceYes to the rice cooker. Also, there’s no need to get one of those expensive models. Someone did some blind tests with his elderly Japanese in-laws (so you know they’re serious about rice) and they found that the mid-range ones are the best for cost effectiveness. https://youtu.be/WXgFtZK_XxM
With the asterisk that they may have had better results from the high-end ones using the specific settings and such for exactly what they had. Personally my ~20k JPY zojirushi works fine.
More expensive models usually have several useful features though. Might worth it depending on your personal needs.
- timer: prepare your rice before going to bed, set the timer, then wake up to freshly cooked rice ready for breakfast
- cooking brow rice (which requires soaking before you can cook it) is now a single step action instead of multi-step actions. You can use the timer to soak the rice before cooking it automatically.
- some models can work as slow cooker, which can be useful from time to time.
- cheap rice cookers use analog magnetic switches to turn off the heat at the right time. Sometimes those switches on the ultra cheap ones aren’t properly calibrated and might slightly undercook or overcook the rice. One time I even got one that would slightly burn the rice, leaving the bottom layer inedible.
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.
- Preheat oven to 350.
- Get a large casserole dish.
- Rinse 3 cups of brown rice and add to dish.
- Add 5 cups of hot or at least warm water to dish (I just microwave it in a pyrex measuring cup before pouring in.)
- Add 2 Tablespoons of butter
- Add 2 teaspoons of salt
- 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.
Cooked in the oven
wow i have to try this. this would probably work with black rice as well
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.
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.
Great find! Best I’ve done was find a perfectly good table next to the dumpster lol
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?
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.
Well that’s pretty high praise for that brand, at least. Thank you for answering my question.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the shopping list to try out! Lots of great ideas here.
Filipino here. Rice is a staple of our diet, and traditionally we’ve mostly eaten Dinorado or Sinandomeng rice. I’d say in the past 20-30 years though Jasmine and Basmati rice have also gained popularity in our dishes. I’ve always been taught this method:
- In a pot, rinse the rice 2-3 times, draining the water each time. Rinse just enough that most of the cloudiness of the water is gone, but some still remains. You’ll want that starch.
- Fill the pot with enough water to cover the rice. Use enough so that if you dip your middle finger to touch the rice underneath, the water line hits the second joint on your finger (I believe the anatomical term is proximal interphalangeal joint lol). It’ll be enough water for whatever amount of rice you have - everytime.
- Cover the pot, put it on the flame, let it boil. Once it’s boiling, turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until the water evaporates.
- ???
- Profit.
Uy kababayan! Sometimes, my dad would get a sack of Maharlika rice from his work and I always thought that it tasted a little sweeter than Sinandomeng and Dinorado. I feel like cooking rice is a coming of age task back at home because the elderly finally trust you around the stove.
For sure! It’s a rite of passage into the world of… even more chores and responsibilities lol
What is your cultural fancy rice? Like when you want to make something flavorful, different, special, or you are just mixing up some leftovers what do you do in these situations?
I forgot about that. We usually put pandan leaves in there from time to time to make it more fragrant. But otherwise, it’s mostly plain rice. Our dishes usually have either a tomato-based sauce or broth anyway, so that takes care of additional flavor.
We call leftover, day-old rice “bahaw”, and is usually made into “sinangag”, which is literally garlic fried rice, and is usually cooked during the following day’s breakfast.
Here’s a nice blog post with pictures that made me hungry: https://www.kawalingpinoy.com/sinangag/
There is a lot! One of the simplest ways to do this is to mix in the soup of a dish. We have a lot of soupy dishes (I’ve always wondered if this has something to do with how well they keep) - Adobo, Sinigang, Bicol Express, Tinola, etc. - and the simplest way to make a flavorful rice is to take the soup of these after cooking and put it over the rice. Generally you do this while eating that dish, but you’ll often see this done even when the original dish is already eaten - one of my favourites is to put pork sisig over sinigang rice. Adobo in particular is great because that soy sauce based soup (and its coconut-added variety) is sooo flavorful.
Another way you’ll often see a spruced up rice is in the form of sinangag, which is essentially like our “fried rice”. You take day-old or refrigerated rice and fry it up with some minced garlic that’s also fried until it’s very crispy. The garlic gives you a little crunch while you’re eating but also introduces a ton of aroma. Sometimes you’ll see this done with butter instead of just cooking oil, or with magic sarap (which is MSG and other seasonings). Not gonna lie, it’s delicious but maybe a bit much.
Other than that, people do actually just fry up rice with bits of meat/egg/veggies on it. Whatever they have on hand. Anything that has leftovers. Afaik, it’s not really called anything here, just something that people do.
Do you open the pot after you turn the heat down?
I usually leave the lid on, but not fully covering the pot so I can keep an eye on it.
Interesting how close and different this is to Arroz blanco. The difference with the puerto rican(and I imagine other latin american) style is you let it boil until the water goes just below rice level so that its just like little bubbles blowing out looking like little crab holes on a beach, and then you cover keep the heat super low and it steams.
Exactly how my mum tought me (she lived till her 20’s in Indonesia).
You dont fluff up your rice with a fork or something and let it sit after that covered for 10 minutes or so?
Haha, sometimes I do that, but when I’m cooking for myself, often no. I think most other households do though, since we (Pinoys in general) often serve rice on a separate plate and not straight from the pot, so that takes care of the fluffing part.
That makes sense thank you. I’m currently in a battle with rice - my pressure cooker recipe keeps failing me and I’m really unhappy with the results. Maybe I’ll just return to using a pot.
Instant pot rice:
-Wash rice several times, more if you want to avoid the rice all sticking together. Drain thoroughly after each wash.
-For rice that typically uses 2 cups of water per cup of rice, like long grain rice or basmati rice, add 1 1/4 cups (1.25 cups) of water per cup of rice.
-Pressure cook for six minutes.
-Natural release for at least ten minutes, more is also okay.
-Fluff rice before serving.
This works perfectly every time for me and is just as good as the fancy rice maker I used to have. I haven’t made rice on the stove in years. Even when I was making it on the stove, it was never this good, and definitely never this consistent.
Max pressure? Mine goes from 1-6. It’s an electronic one so I assume even at its highest it’s not as that high of a pressure.
fluff up your rice with a fork
absolutely never. it is not needed. just cook until done and serve hot
Calrose rice, sometimes add 1/2 cup of brown rice for a total of 3 cups. Wash until water is clear. Put in rice cooker and press cook button :)
If I want it to smell really nice I put in either a bay leaf or star anise.
Can’t go wrong with a rice cooker!
Yeah, I cook rice so often I can’t be assed to do it any other way.
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.
I skipped the pain and just bought a rice cooker. It’s easily my most used kitchen gadget.
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I just use a rice cooker.
I tend to buy jasmine rice and I use a 1:1 rice to water ratio.
I wasted so many years making rice on the stove. The rice cooker has been a game changer, and not just for rice. Mine can do cakes, breads, other grains like quinoa… I don’t have many “single use appliances” but the rice cooker has designated countertop space.
Hongkonger here. We usually bought Thailand jasmine rice, and cook it with rice cooker.
I’ve tried both cheaper and expensive rice brands and the difference in both taste and smell is really significant, even though they are both jasmine rice.
As for cooking it, you really can’t go wrong with a rice cooker
1/2 to 3/4 cup of rice per person. Rinse the rice with cold water 1-3 times. Both the bowl and the cup have those scales on it, so that gets the water-rice ratio covered (E.g. fill the water up to the “—— 2” if you put 2 cups of rice). That line gives you the standard fluffiness, so adjust slightly to your preference. Plug in the cord, flip the switch, let the rice cooker do its job and work on other stuff.
When the switch pops, the rice is cooked. Pull the cord, open the lid and gently mix/stir the rice a little bit with the spoon that came along the cooker. Doing so prevents the rice from sticking to the bowl (that’s what I’ve been told and it seems to works), and to “add some air in between the rice” as it taste better this way. Where I’m from, people usually prefers the feel of discrete/individual grains of rice, instead of a “blob”/”goop” of rice.
I often use a pressure cooker to cook rice faster. Especially cause I know the rice-water proportions (1:1.5) that would always give me a good result in ~5 mins.
I mostly cook basmati or Thai jasmine rice. I don’t have a rice cooker, or space for one in my kitchen, so I use a regular pot with a lid.
- Wash the rice in the pot by running it under the tap and mixing it until the bowl fills up. Discard the water and repeat 3-4 times, or until the water becomes clear.
- Drain the pot completely after washing the rice, then add water about 1:1 by volume with rice, or slightly less for basmati.
- Cover with lid and put on high heat until it begins vigorously boiling (keep an eye on it).
- Reduce the heat to low and leave for 5-6 minutes.
- Turn the heat completely off and leave covered another 5-7 minutes.
Different kinds of rice might require adjustments to the time, but the overall procedure stays the same.
This is the Way.
I do it slightly differently… Learned to do it in Korea. But the differences in my approach are just a matter of how you time things. I bring to a boil uncovered, then cover and leave it on low for 25 mins, then 10 mins off the heat.
The gist of the method is not so much to boil the rice, but to let it steam in its own heat. That’s how you get soft yet consistent grains of rice.
With a bit of practice, you get perfect rice every time, and it’s barely more work than a rice cooker! The only things that a rice cooker add is stuff like timing the cooking for you, the ability to set a timer, and the ability to keep the rice warm once it’s cooked. (Which, granted, are pretty useful.)
Thanks for the reply. I’ll try your method soon!
The reason I cover mine from the beginning is mostly to reduce the time it takes to come to a boil, especially when I use the small rings on an electric stove. I don’t know if that makes a difference in the end result.
Does the rice not get overcooked if you leave it in for 35 min + boiling time?
I should have specified I don’t bring it to a full boil. I turn down the heat just when it starts to boil.
Not claiming my method is better than yours! Your method actually sounds quicker, which is a good argument for it.
Not claiming my method is better than yours!
I didn’t think you did :)
I’m happy to explore variations in the never-ending pursuit of perfect rice ;)
Instant pot. High pressure, 0 minutes. 20 minute natural release. Water and rice measured by weight, not cups. Each type needs a different ratio. Generally less water needed than other methods as the steam has nowhere to go.
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The ol’ knuckle method never fails.
Also really, if you want perfect rice, it’s a rice cooker. Consistent and gets results, not to mention fast.
