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To Wash and Boil Rice
Wash in several waters, rubbing gently between the fingers; drain, drop it into boiling water only sufficient to cook it by the time the water is boiled off, and so when done each grain will preserve its shape. This is the Chinese method.
VI. Stewing.
STEWING is the basis of all made dishes, and a most economical and savory manner of cooking. Its perfection depends upon the slowness with which it is done. A stew should never boil, nor even simmer. Two hundred degrees is the greatest heat admissible; 190 degrees is hot enough. Hence it is most safely performed by placing the stew-pan in another vessel of water-a Bain-marie. Stews should never be greasy nor very highly seasoned. The pot lid should be kept close, and an occasional shaking of the contents will save stirring.
Two things are packed into one entry: an absorption method for rice, and a short lecture on stewing temperatures. Both are sound; the rice instruction just omits every number.
- The hingeThe whole method depends on measuring the water rather than guessing. For long-grain white rice, 1 cup rice to 1 1/2 cups water, brought to a boil, then covered and held at the barest tremble for 15 to 18 minutes, ends with the water gone at the moment the grains are done.
- WashingRubbing under several changes of water removes surface starch, which is exactly what keeps the grains separate. Rinse until the water runs nearly clear, three or four changes, and drain well. Skip it only for enriched rice, where the vitamin coating rinses away with the starch.
- Rest off the heatThe book stops at "when done." Leave the pan covered off the heat for 10 minutes before lifting the lid; the top layer finishes steaming and the grains firm up enough to fork apart without breaking.
- No salt is mentionedAdd about 1/2 teaspoon salt per cup of dry rice to the water. Salting the cooking water seasons the grains more evenly than salting them afterward.
- YieldOne cup of dry rice gives roughly three cups cooked, enough for four as a side dish.
- Those stewing temperatures190F to 200F is genuinely correct and worth remembering: it is below the 212F boil, so collagen converts to gelatin without the agitation that shreds meat and clouds the liquid. On a modern burner that is a surface with occasional lazy bubbles at the edge, no more. The book's own answer is the water bath rather than direct heat.
- Bain-marieHere it means the stewpan set inside a larger pan of hot water, not the hotel steam table the term now suggests. A heavy enameled cast-iron pot on a diffuser does the same job with less fuss.
- Shaking instead of stirringSliding the covered pot back and forth redistributes the contents without breaking up meat or vegetables, and without letting steam out. It applies to the rice as well: do not stir it once the lid is on.
The absorption method described here, water measured so that it disappears exactly as the grain finishes, is the standard technique across most of Asia, and it stands in deliberate contrast to the British habit of boiling rice in a large volume of water and draining it. That contrast mattered because cooks needed to be told that the goal was separate grains at all. The stewing note that follows belongs to a growing confidence in the thermometer, as household manuals began quoting specific degrees rather than describing heat by eye, and the insistence that a stew should never even simmer is one of the more accurate pieces of advice of its kind.