Southern Way of Boiling Rice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Pick over the rice and rinse it in cold water until perfectly clean.
Cook and serve
Put the rice in a pot of boiling water.
Boil hard for 17 minutes.
Drain off the water completely.
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
- Is the starch that softens and swells into the finished grains.
- Boiling water
- Cooks the rice by hydrating the starch so the grains soften.
The step that matters
Drain off the water completely. Leftover cooking water makes boiled rice soggy and clumped, because the grains keep absorbing and releasing starch. Removing it fully lets the steam dry the surface 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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