Boiled Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and cook
Pick over the rice.
Slowly add the rice to the boiling salted water to maintain the boil.
Boil for 30 minutes or until soft, testing the kernels for doneness.
Drain and dry
Drain the rice in a coarse strainer and rinse with 1 quart of hot water.
Return the rice to the kettle, cover, and let it sit on the back of the stove to dry off until the kernels are distinct.
When stirring the rice, use a fork to avoid breaking the kernels.
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
- Starch absorbs water and swells as it cooks, softening the kernels into a tender texture.
- Boiling water
- Carries heat into the rice and supplies the water that hydrates the starch as it cooks.
The step that matters
Add the rice slowly to keep the water boiling. Rice cools boiling water when it goes in. Adding it slowly lets the water return to a boil quickly, so the rice cooks evenly instead of sitting in cooler water and turning gummy.
“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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