To Boil Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Rinse the rice in a bowl of water, rubbing it with your hand, and pour off the water until it is clear.
Cook the rice
Combine the rinsed rice with 2 ½ cups of cold water and 1 teaspoon of salt in a pot.
Cover the pot and bring it to a boil over high heat for 10 minutes.
Pour off most of the water, then move the pot to a low heat and let it sit for 15 minutes to finish cooking.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Rice
- Its starch absorbs water and swells as it cooks, turning the grains tender.
- Cold water
- Provides the liquid that hydrates the starch so the grains soften through cooking.
The step that matters
Rinsing the rice until the water runs clear. Rinsing washes away loose surface starch. Without it, the starch sticks grains together and the cooked rice turns gummy instead of fluffy.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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