Southern Way of Boiling Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick over the rice and rinse it in cold water until perfectly clean.
Boil and steam
Put the rice in a pot of boiling water, using 1 quart of water for less than 1 teacup of rice.
Boil hard for 17 minutes.
Drain the water thoroughly and let the rice steam for 15 minutes with the lid off.
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 main body of the dish; cooking softens its starch so the grains become tender.
- Water
- Cooks the rice by heat transfer and hydrates the starch so the grains swell and soften.
The step that matters
Drain the water thoroughly. Leftover cooking water left on the rice keeps it wet and gummy, while steaming with the lid off lets surface moisture evaporate so the grains stay separate.
“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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