How do you cook rice properly? Mine either ends up gloopy – too much water? – or the rice absorbs all the water before it’s cooked, so I add more and it becomes gloopy! Any tips?
Tom, Paris, France
Rice is one of those ingredients that people find the easiest thing in the world to cook or, frustratingly, the hardest. It depends, for a start, on what kind of rice you’re using (for example, brown rice, which includes the fibrous bran and germ, will always take longer to cook than white rice, which is purely starch), but let’s assume you’re talking white, basmati or another long-grain rice in a pot and on a stovetop.
First things first, always rinse the rice to get rid of its starchy coating. Next, soak it: some swear by a long soak (overnight), others think it needs much less time (an hour). Either way, cooking rice is largely about getting it to rehydrate, and soaking softens the grains, which helps water get in, which in turn speeds up the cooking.
Once the rice is rinsed, soaked and drained, you’re good to go, so next work out the water ratio, which is simply one part rice (350g, say) to one and a half parts water (525ml). Put the water and rice in a pot, bring to a boil, give it a quick stir, then turn the heat right down. Seal the pot very well – this is important, because you want the rice to steam from here on in – and leave to cook for 12 minutes. Take off the heat, set aside, still covered, for five minutes, then fluff with a fork – and I mean fluff, not stir, because that turns it to mush.
This boil-steam method is just one approach. You could parboil it in lots of water, followed by a steam, though that requires two pots, or treat it like pasta (boil until cooked, then drain), or go for a pure steam (though that works best with short-grain rice). The boil-steam method should work every time, though.
