Perfect rice

[yvonne johnson]

I’ve played around with several methods of cooking rice.  Boiling on the stove-top in varying quantities of water. For the last several years though we’ve used one way that is very reliable.

Pre-heat oven to 400F

Heavy duty  pan with tight fitting lid

For 2 people

1 cup of rice (I do not rinse)

1 and one third cups water

Stir and add salt

Place foil between pan and lid

Cook in oven for 20 mins for long grain. Slightly less time for basmati

PS: If your other dishes aren’t quite ready the rice will keep warm in the pan out of the oven for some time.

Any other easy means of cooking rice that egulletarians use?

[tommy]

i rinse the #### out of the rice (i find that it doesn't get sticky that way).  i put the rice in cold water that extends about 1/4 to 1/2 inch above the rice.  

turn heat on high and boil until the water goes down to the level of the rice.  cover and simmer til done.  

i found this works perfectly every time.  although i've heard that rice cookers are foolproof and yield great results.  it just seems like cheating to me.

[Fat Guy]

We received a Zojirushi computerized rice cooker as a wedding gift, from some Asian friends who are very serious about rice. Let me tell you, this thing is amazing. You put in the rice, you put in the water, and a little while later there's a pile of cooked rice sitting in there. And it will cook rice in any style, from short-grain stickyish Asian-style rice to long-grain, every-grain-separate European-style rice (you can add butter and stuff right to the machine), to brown rice. I can't see buying one of these things unless you eat a whole lot of rice, but I love that someone else bought it for us.

[tommy]

Quote: from Fat Guy on 3:33 pm on Oct. 12, 2001

You put in the rice, you put in the water, and a little while later there's a pile of cooked rice sitting in there.

but i ask:  where's the challenge?  that feeling of pride of a job well done?  that nutty/burnt taste that only a screw-up in a saucepan can give?

;)

i gotta get me one of these things.  what do they run?  i guess i'll probably find out online before someone gets to answer.  but don't let that deter further discussion of prices/brands/features, etc.

[Fat Guy]

The really good computerized ones start at around 贶 thus my comment that you need to eat a lot of rice to make it worthwhile. I think the one I have -- or, rather, the current model that is its equivalent, the NS-JCC18  -- goes for 赓 at most discount kitchen places. You can also get a cheapo rice cooker for under โ, which will be useful for Asian-style rice but won't offer you much versatility.

[tommy]

and what's your opinion on fuzzy logic, as applied to rice cooking?

(don't take that seriously, i'm kinda kidding)

[Fat Guy]

It should go without saying that rice cooked via fuzzy logic technology is neither fully true nor fully false.

[mamster]

Hey, Shaw, does your rice cooker have a nonstick coating?  If so, does it do any good?  I have a Rival rice cooker that I got because it was cheap and recommended in Cook's Illustrated, but the rice sticks to it like #### and it has to be soaked.  So I'm willing to make it a hand-me-down and get a Zojirushi or the like if the teflon helps.

As long as it has Fluffy Logic, of course.

[Fat Guy]

Yes, it has a non-stick coating, as do all the good ones.

Yes, it helps -- it's one of the few applications for which I think a teflon-like coating is actually worth having. The rice releases beautifully and all you need to do is rinse the insert when you're done.

One interesting thing: It takes longer to make rice in a good rice cooker than in a cheap one or on the stovetop. The fuzzy logic machines go through a warmup cycle that adds maybe 20 minutes to the cooking time, for about a 45 minute total. You can skip the warmup cycle, but I've found that the rice comes out slightly better (fluffier, primarily) if you let it run the whole program. These machines are also good at maintaining the rice at a good, edible temperature and consistency for several hours. The rice is actually best about 20-30 minutes after the cooking cycle has ended, but I've left rice in overnight by mistake and found it quite edible in the morning.

[Steve Klc]

Steven--last night chefette and I detoured into an international market, which mostly represented Asian populations--chinese, korean and japanese--and came across a vast array of those automatic rice cookers.  They seemed cute and compact--and roughly on par with those automatic bread makers.  (As pastry chefs, we are automatically attracted to gadgets and tools.) I was intrigued and came home to log on to eGullet to see if anyone else had ever used one and to what effect.  I'm so glad everyone posted--one question, though--were the instructions in English?  or is it so automatic that you can get by without a translation?  When I was playing with the machines, a woman came over and popped in an instructional video that looked kind of like a Jetson's cartoon--except that it was in Korean or Chinese or, well you get the picture.

The model that caught our eye was the smallest--a very cute Sanyo that was selling for ๳.  

Have you experimented enough to figure out if your model is too automatic--that how it is pre-programmed may actually be a detriment?  do you wish it had more flexibility?

Have you tried arborio rice in it yet?

We did leave the store with a ื "Anytop" (Model WM-500 by Woonam) a blender/mixer/grinder/pulverizer--very stylishly

designed in lime green and ivory.  Anyone else seen this thing?  It has 2 different grinding blades--it's more powerful than a Braun-style coffee grinder--and it is designed to be waterproof--the containers are sealed and then "inverted" onto the base.  So you can puree fruit, grind wet spice mixtures, etc.--and not burn out your motor. It is the neatest thing--however, nothing is in English.

[Fat Guy]

Steve, the instructions will be in English if you buy a product designated for the American market from one of the major manufacturers. Some Asian stores, however, sell gray market machines, or ones from manufacturers that don't package for English speakers. It's not particularly necessary to have the instructions, though.

These machines are 100% automated. There is no flexibility in their programming. If you want a participatory rice cooking experience, there's no point in using a machine. They're intended for set-it-and-forget-it use. They do however have quite a bit of flexibility within that system. Mine has five different settings for white rice, brown rice, pilaf, sticky rice, and rice porridge. If you cook Arborio-style rice on the porridge setting you get something approximating risotto, but it's not nearly as close an approximation as you'd get with a pressure cooker.

The rice cooker's main advantage is that it maintains extremely precise thermostatic control over a variety of preprogrammed heat curves that have been determined by some very serious rice people to be optimal for rice. The secondary advantage is that the sealed environment allows only a small amount of steam to escape -- just enough to maintain the right moisture balance. Thirdly, there is the warming aspect -- something that is simply not possible to accomplish on a typical stovetop. But I would not hold these machines out as good products for making offbeat rice recipes.

[Fat Guy]

I should also add: Get the biggest one you can. The footprint of the 10-cup machines is hardly larger than that of the 5-cup machines, and the price difference is only บ-ฤ for most lines. And it's always nice to be able to make a lot of rice when you want to. You'll find that as a result of having one of these machines you eat rice in situations where you didn't think to eat rice before. For example, if we make a machine full of rice, we might eat some with lunch and some with dinner. Then later at night we might mix yogurt and raisins and maple syrup with some of the warm rice for a nice snack. The next day, after a lot of the moisture is gone, I might use it to make fried rice.

[Steve Klc]

Thanks Steven--that is actually the kind of feedback I was looking for--it seems that as long as there are a variety of pre-programmed cycles, given a little experimentation, one should be able to get the desired effect.

A specific example--for one dessert I created last year, I had to cook a coconut risotto--arborio, laboriously stirred and cooked down on the stovetop with coconut water, coconut puree and water.  I used it as a component in a coconut panna cotta--so I just hid a ball of the risotto in a container--poured the panna cotta around it, let it set up, and then poured a thin layer of Inniskillin icewine gelee on the surface, with a brunoise of Asian pear embedded in the gelee.  Anyway, I never figured out a less-labor intensive way to do the rice--and it's not like I needed an amazing risotto.  I suspect I could have used one of these automated rice cookers--and gotten a very acceptable result.  And freed up 40 minutes of prep.

does the larger volume bowl work with a smaller amount of rice--or do you have to use a large amount all the time?

[Fat Guy]

You can cook as little as one cup of rice (one cup raw, that is -- you'll also be adding a couple of cups of water), in either size machine, and it will come out just as well as if you filled the machine to capacity.

Certainly the risotto-like substance you get from the rice cooker is good enough for the recipe you're describing. Especially since you're probably serving that dessert at a cool temperature or room temperature, there's little point in making a real risotto. I still think, however, that the pressure cooker is the best shortcut method for risotto. You only have to stir once, after about six minutes. I'm also assuming your list of ingredients was complete, i.e., that you didn't use onions. There's no way to sautee anything in the rice cooking machine, so you'd need to do that sort of mise in another vessel anyway -- which makes the rice cooker a waste for that application.

If you make risotto in the rice cooker, open the machine after the cooking cycle is complete, stir, and close for ten or so minutes after. This will give a gooier mixture, as it will allow for some additional starch release. You can also maintain the risotto-like substance in a warm state for awhile.

In Asian restaurants, by the way, they split the cooking and keeping-warm functions into two different machines: A rice cooker and a rice warmer.

Also, even if you get a machine with English instructions, you'll probably want to disregard most of the suggested amounts of water. I don't know if it's a difference between the rice available here and the rice available in Asia (though I know a lot of it comes from the Carolinas anyway) or what, but I find that universally I need to use more water than the manual suggests in order to get the best results.

The non-stick surfaces of these machines are pretty soft, so us only plastic implements.

Zojirushi's site is http://www.zojirushi.com and I know a lot of the aficianados swear by this brand.

You will find some very extensive and heated rice cooker debates on the Asian food newsgroups.

By the way, cups as interpreted by these rice cookers are not real cups. They are some sort of metrically derived cups that measure out to about 3/4 of a real cup. I disregard the machine's interpretation of cups and use regular 8-ounce measuring cups.

(Edited by Fat Guy at 11:43 am on Oct. 13, 2001)

[Katherine]

I had a 3-cup Zojirushi rice cooker I used all the time. I made whole grain porridge for breakfast, sweet rice ad sushi rice, pilafs, and could set it so there was hot rice waiting for me at night. It's small enough so that I could make 1 serving and not have leftovers when I didn't want to bother with them.

I gave it to my daughter to take to school, and now she uses it to make noodle soup, rice, and to reheat leftovers.

I miss it a lot. If I had unlimited money and storage space, I'd have one in each size.

The Japanese make wonderful toys.

[Fat Guy]

In a certain sense the lower tech rice cookers (such as the one you're probably talking about) are actually more versatile than the fuzzy logic ones. With the fancy ones, you can't really open them in mid-cook because you'll interrupt the program. The cheaper ones work purely on a 212-degree thermostat without regard to time, so you can trick them into doing all sorts of stuff.

[grahame]

A brief comment on the "Get the biggest one you can" - with all rice cookers there is a minimum amount of rice that you can cook - this tends to be larger for the non-computerised ones.

My uncle followed this theory exactly when my Mum asked him to pick one up in Singapore on his way back to Australia.  Problem was, the minimum amount you could cook was still too much for our family of five...  Still, it did come in very useful for all the local school fetes :)

Granted, this was pre-computerised days, and it was a pretty big one, but something you may want to think about anyway...

[Fat Guy]

Definitely, if you get one of the non-computerized rice cookers, you need to make a decision about how much rice you will cook most of the time. To get a machine that is too large will leave you with a lot of dry, crusty rice when you cook small quantities. But with the computerized rice cookers with their non-stick liners, you should be able to cook as little as one cup in even the 10-cup models. And that's about as big as you'd want to go, unless you're a large family that eats rice several times a day.

[sladeums]

Revisiting this thread.

Rice cookers aside, does anyone have any helpful hints for decent rice on the stovetop?

We constantly have problems with rice coming out sticky.

We are usually just cooking cheap, buck-a-bag rice.*

Is it simply rinsing that is the answer?

edit: or is it just not buying shit rice?

Edited May 25, 2003 by sladeums (log)

[Jinmyo]

Revisiting this thread.

Rice cookers aside, does anyone have any helpful hints for decent rice on the stovetop?

We constantly have problems with rice coming out sticky.

We are usually just cooking cheap, buck-a-bag rice.

Is it simply rinsing that is the answer?

No. Buy better rice. Really.

[sladeums]

Revisiting this thread.

Rice cookers aside, does anyone have any helpful hints for decent rice on the stovetop?

We constantly have problems with rice coming out sticky.

We are usually just cooking cheap, buck-a-bag rice.

Is it simply rinsing that is the answer?

No. Buy better rice. Really.

Ha Jin!

I already answered my own question likewise via the noted edit to the original post.

But, really, our rice usually turns out really crappy. Why is that, then?

What makes bad (uncooked) rice?

Too young?

Too old?

Bad seed?

All of the above?

[sng sling]

A specific example--for one dessert I created last year, I had to cook a coconut risotto--arborio, laboriously stirred and cooked down on the stovetop with coconut water, coconut puree and water.  

Careful!!!

When I first moved to Japan, I bought one of those fuzzy logic cookers and was delighted by how well it worked (once my secretary had translated the instructions!).

In a burst of creativity, I decided that it would be great for rice pudding, though my Japanese friends were horrified by my plan to put milk, eggs, and sugar into RICE. The milk mixture boiled over through the steam vents, and I was scrubbing boiled milk scum out of every crevice in the cooker and my counters for hours!!

The fuzzy logic cookers are slower, and when my wife and I married, my slower cooker went to Salvation Army in favor of a simpler, faster model.

Some tips we use for Japanese-style rice (actually use Aussie or California grown japonica as it's much cheaper here in Singapore and very close in quality):

Always cook extra as Steven noted. We divide it into portions in Saran and freeze it. Even if you eat it the next day, freezing it and then nuking the packet gives close to fresh-cooked quality without mushiness.

A Japanese grocery or food section will have all kinds of neat vegetable, kombu, & nori packets for cooking into the rice for a quick maze gohan.

[Nick]

Wash rice well. Put in a saucepan and add water equal in depth to the rice - this is for small batches - larger batches not so much water.

Bring it to a boil and as it comes there, add salt. Let it boil a little bit with the cover off. Then turn down the heat and put the cover on. Cook at a medium simmer for awhile and then finish it off as low as the burner will go.

After awhile you get so you intuitively know when the rice is about done. Take a bamboo paddle and go down to the bottom. Probably still a little moist so give the rice a few turns with the paddle and cook a little longer.

[tommy]

my method is similar to nick's. i rinse thoroughly. i put the rice in a sauce pan and cover with cold water and then an additional 1/4-1/2 inch of water above that. high heat to a boil uncovered until the water is the level of the rice, lower all the way, cover, and finish. it's almost fool-proof.

edit: ok, once again i see that i've already said this on this thread. this time, it was 1.5 years ago. i suppose it's now clear that i haven't changed my approach in some time.

Edited May 25, 2003 by tommy (log)

[Suzanne F]

Different varieties of rice need different proportions of water. Some need to be rinsed, some do not. There is no "one right way" for all kinds of rice. You might want to have a look at Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid's Seductions of Rice for cooking methods for different varieties.

If you still have crappy cheap rice that you want to use up:

bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil;

add however much rice you want to cook (assume it will double in bulk);

bring the water back to a boil, and stir the whole thing occasionally to keep the stuff from sticking to the bottom of the pan;

cook uncovered at a rolling boil for about 15 minutes; but start checking at 13 minutes to see if the rice is done;

when the rice is tender but not yet splitting, drain it thoroughly, mix in a LOT of butter, and serve.