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To Boil Rice
Rice when done should have every grain perfect. It should not be a gluey mass. The way to do it is to drop the rice into plenty of boiling water, boil fast and with the lid off, and when just done drain into a colander before serving. This is the way to boil rice for serving with gumbo.
This is the pasta method: rice cooked in abundant water and drained, rather than absorption-cooked in a measured amount. It works, and it is still the surest way to get separate grains from unfamiliar rice.
- Water and saltUse at least 2 quarts of water per cup of rice, salted like pasta water — about 1 tablespoon per quart. The original assumes you know to salt it; unsalted boiled rice under gumbo tastes flat.
- Rinse firstFor long-grain white rice, rinse in a few changes of cold water until it runs nearly clear. Removing loose surface starch helps prevent the "gluey mass" the recipe warns against, alongside the large volume of water and the draining the original calls for.
- TimingLong-grain white rice needs 10-14 minutes at a hard boil; test a grain rather than watching the clock, since a rolling boil in plenty of water brings rice to doneness sooner than the absorption method. Pull it when the center has just lost its chalkiness.
- Do not stirOnce the rice is in, leave it alone apart from a single stir to separate the grains at the start. Agitation rubs starch off the outside of the grains and can make the result stickier.
- After drainingDrain thoroughly and let it sit in the colander a minute or two, uncovered, so the surface steam escapes. Some cooks return it to the dry hot pot off the heat with a folded towel over the top for five minutes.
- Which riceThis method suits long-grain and parboiled rice. It is wrong for arborio, sushi rice, or any short-grain variety where the released starch is the point, and it will wash away the enrichment on "enriched" American rice, though that is a nutritional loss rather than a culinary one.
- YieldOne cup of dry long-grain rice gives roughly three cups cooked, enough for four bowls of gumbo. Serve the rice in the bowl and ladle the gumbo over it, which is what the last sentence is pointing toward.
The instruction to boil rice hard in plenty of water and drain it is one of the two great rice methods in English-language cookbooks, and nineteenth-century American books repeat it often — frequently with the same anxious insistence that every grain stand apart. The specific note about gumbo places this recipe in the Gulf South tradition, where rice was a staple crop as well as a staple food: Louisiana and the Carolina Lowcountry were the centers of American rice growing, and in Creole cooking rice is not a side dish but the bed the gumbo is poured over.