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Boiled Rice

Boiled rice is cooked by simmering rice in salted water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Boiled Rice

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the rice

  1. In a saucepan, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil and add 1¼ tablespoons of coarse sea salt.

  2. Slowly add the washed rice to the boiling water to maintain the boil.

  3. Cook uncovered until the grains are soft, adding more water if necessary.

Drain and dry

  1. Once tender, drain the rice and return it to the saucepan.

  2. Cover with a clean tea towel and place on the back of the stove to dry.

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
Its starch gelatinises as it cooks, softening the grains and giving the dish its body.

The step that matters

Adding the rice slowly to boiling water. A large amount of cold rice added at once lowers the water's temperature and stalls the boil. Keeping the water boiling cooks the grains evenly and helps them stay separate rather than clumping.

“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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