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Rice, Steamed
Use a potato steamer, and proceed as follows. Spread at the bottom a piece of muslin or a thin cloth; put the rice on this in an even layer--the thinner the layer the quicker it will cook. Have the water well salted, and keep it boiling fast. Turn the rice about if the layer is thick, that the top may get equally cooked. It will take from one to two hours, according to the quantity and kind of rice. This is a convenient and economical method, as a pudding, or anything of a mild flavour, can be boiled under it, and the rice will be perfectly cooked.
A steamer basket, a cloth and boiling water are all this needs. The one thing worth adjusting is the time, which was written for the coarse, long-stored rice of the period.
- The timing is the thingOne to two hours will reduce modern milled rice to mush. Long-grain white rice steamed in a thin layer is generally done in 20-30 minutes; parboiled rice takes rather longer, and brown rice 45 minutes or more. Test a few grains rather than watching the clock.
- "Potato steamer"A perforated pan or colander that sits over a saucepan of boiling water with a tight lid. Any steamer insert, a metal colander over a stockpot, or a bamboo steamer does the same job.
- The clothMuslin here means unbleached cheesecloth or a thin cotton cloth, used to stop grains falling through the holes. A double layer of cheesecloth or a round of perforated parchment works; skip it if your steamer holes are fine.
- Salting the water is pointlessSteam carries no salt, so the seasoning in the boiling water below never reaches the rice. Toss the rice with salt before steaming, or salt it after.
- Rinse firstRinsing until the water runs clear removes loose surface starch and keeps the grains separate, which is the whole object of steaming rather than boiling. A 20-minute soak beforehand shortens the steaming time further.
- Thin layers, and turn themAn even layer no more than an inch deep cooks fastest. If you pile it deeper, lift and turn it with a fork once or twice so the top is not left hard while the bottom overcooks.
- Cooking two things at onceThe suggestion of boiling a pudding underneath still works, but the steam takes on the smell of whatever is below. Keep it to plain water or something mild, as the original says, and top up with boiling water so the pan never runs dry.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives roughly three cups cooked, enough for four as a side dish.
Steaming seems to have answered a specific Victorian anxiety: British cooks were often accused of boiling rice into paste, and by the later nineteenth century, with curries and mulligatawny apparently well established in the middle-class repertoire, separate dry grains were widely taken as the mark of a competent kitchen. Steaming over a pan already in use also suited the economics of a coal range, where every inch of steam was worth accounting for; it is tempting, though no more than that, to connect the same logic with tiered steamers and the habit of cooking a pudding beneath the vegetables. The generous one-to-two-hour window probably reflects the rice available at the time, generally sold loose from sacks, variable in age and milling, and often much drier than anything on a supermarket shelf now.