Boiled Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick over the rice and wash it well.
Boil the rice
Add the rice to rapidly boiling, salted water a few grains at a time to maintain boiling.
Stir gently with a fork or wooden spoon to keep the grains from sticking together.
Boil until the grains are soft, about 25 minutes.
Cut a grain in two; if there is no hard core, the rice is done.
Finish and dry
Drain in a colander.
Rinse with hot water.
Dry in an open oven or on the back of the stove until every grain is plump and separate.
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
- Provides the starch that softens during boiling and becomes the body of the dish.
- Boiling water
- Cooks the grains evenly by hydrating the starch while keeping the pot at a steady boil.
- Salt
- Seasons the grains as they absorb the cooking water.
The step that matters
Add the rice a few grains at a time. Adding rice slowly keeps the water at a rolling boil. Dumping it in drops the temperature, so the grains cook unevenly and can turn gummy or stick together.
“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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