Skip to main content
Main

How to Boil Rice

A simple method for boiling rice with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

How to Boil Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the rice.

  2. Wash the rice in cold water.

  3. Drain the last water just before boiling.

  4. Prepare a saucepan.

Boil

  1. Add enough water to cover the rice by 2 inches.

  2. Add coarse sea salt.

  3. Bring the water to a boil.

  4. Keep the water boiling.

  5. Gradually sprinkle the rice into the boiling water.

  6. Boil for about 20 minutes with the pan covered.

Drain and serve

  1. Drain the rice in a colander.

  2. Cover the rice to let it stand for several minutes.

  3. Ensure every grain is separate and dry before serving.

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
Forms the bulk of the dish; its starch gelatinises as it cooks, setting the texture of each grain.

The step that matters

Gradually sprinkle the rice into the boiling water. Adding rice gradually keeps the water at a rolling boil so it does not stop boiling when the rice goes in. Dropping it in all at once can cool the water and cause grains to clump and cook unevenly.

“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.

More boiled rice recipes

You might also like