Cooking Rice the Right Way (truth – there is no right way.)
So today I’d like to talk about cooking rice. I suppose this would be better as a video but I already started typing. The goal is not to make it gummy. Sticky Asian rice is different and so is creamy Risotto. Other than that, we want fluffy.
I was watching this lady the other day cooking rice a couple of different ways. All with long grain white rice. She put it in her Instapot. She put it in a crock pot. She cooked it on the stove according to directions. Then she did something else on the stove. I think by sautéing it in oil first to see if the texture would be any different. She didn’t use a rice steamer, my go-to method.
My husband and I, were watching Amy Schumer Learns to Cook, (not for children) and her husband is a James Beard award-winning chef. He was just boiling it like you would pasta and straining it out and then drying it to make the perfect fluffy rice. My husband and I looked at each other and we go, “What the heck? Who does rice that way?” Because normally you put in exactly how much rice you need and then boil it down until its simultaneously cooked and the water is evaporated.
Cooking it like noodles? I mean, it just kind of blew my mind. But there’s another way that a very dear family friend makes. It’s the middle eastern way to make Rice Pilaf. This a spectacular rice dish. I have to ask her permission to share it because it’s a family recipe. It’s so beloved that she actually prints cards and gives it to people.
How she prepares her rice is a revelation. She boils water and takes the boiling water and puts it in a bowl, and then she puts the rice in it and leaves it soak for a couple hours. That pulls all the starch out of it and then she cooks the rice as you regularly would with chicken stock. She sautés the rice a little in some butter first. It’s just phenomenal. I was honored to be invited over to watch her make it so I could learn the secret.
Rice really isn’t forgiving. Through the years is I haven’t been able to make good restaurant quality Mexican rice. As you know, that if you’ve read my earlier stuff or listening to anything, I’m heavily influenced by Mexican food. If you lift the lid and stir the rice midway through it will be gummy. But if you can’t lift the lid how will you know if it’s done? So, I bought a glass lid! Problem solved.
What I lack in a good, consistent Mexican rice I make up for with my excellent Risotto’s. Risotto is supposed to be really creamy so that’s okay when it comes out like that.
The secrets to making rice will make an excellent video eventually, we can learn together. Boiling it like you would macaroni, soaking it in boiling water and rinsing it, putting in the rice steamer (my number one method), boiling it with the correct amount of water, Instapot, and the Crock-Pot. What the heck’s going on with that? That’s just a waste of dirtying a Crock-Pot.
Oh well, it all boils down to we make rice how our moms made it. I’m hungry for Mexican rice now. I’m gonna go take another crack at it.