To Boil Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick and wash the rice.
Put the rice in a pot with the cold water and add salt.
Cook
Cover the pot and bring to a boil.
Let it boil until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes over high heat.
Do not stir while cooking.
Rest
After cooking, let it steam for a few minutes to ensure each grain stands alone.
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 swells and gelatinizes with water, becoming tender and forming the body of the dish.
- Cold water
- Hydrates the grains so they can soften and cook evenly through the boil.
The step that matters
Do not stir while cooking. Stirring rubs loose surface starch from the grains into the water, which makes the cooked rice sticky and gummy instead of separate and 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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