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Boiled Rice

A simple dish of rice boiled in salted water and rested to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Boiled Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the rice and remove any husks.

  2. Wash the rice in cold water and drain it.

Cook and rest

  1. Put the rice into a pot with plenty of boiling salted water.

  2. Boil for 12 minutes.

  3. Drain the rice and cover it with the lid or a thick towel.

  4. Let it stand for 10 to 12 minutes until dry and the grains crack slightly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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 cooks into the tender, separate grains of the dish.
Water
Cooks the rice by gelatinising its starch while it absorbs moisture as it boils.

The step that matters

Let it stand covered after draining. Resting covered lets residual steam finish drying the surface and firming the grains, so they dry out and crack slightly rather than turning wet or mushy.

“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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