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Boiled Rice
Pick over and wash 1 cupful of raw rice, rubbing it hard and changing the water until it runs off clear, then drain. Have fully 4 quarts of water boiling rapidly in the kettle. Add 1/2 teaspoonful of salt and the rice and cover until it boils again, then partly uncover or it will boil over. Keep the water at a galloping boil. In ten minutes begin to test, lifting out a few grains with a fork and rubbing them between thumb and finger; when tender to the center (which will take about twenty minutes) the rice is done.
Turn into a colander, cover with a cloth and let steam in the oven for five or ten minutes. This may be served plain as a vegetable or with a sauce or cream and sugar as a dessert.
This is the pasta method for rice: a large volume of salted boiling water, drain, then dry off in residual heat. It works, but the assumptions behind it belong to a different rice supply.
- Why the hard washingRice of this era was often coated with talc or glucose for shipping and appearance, and the sacks carried chaff and stones — hence "pick over" and washing until the water runs clear. Modern packaged rice needs at most a rinse or two to remove surface starch, and enriched rice loses some of its added vitamins if rinsed at all.
- Water volumeFour quarts to one cup of rice is roughly a 16:1 ratio. That much water dilutes the starch so grains stay separate, but it also leaches flavour and any enrichment. Two quarts is plenty for the same effect.
- The twenty minutesTwenty minutes at a rolling boil suits the older, less uniformly milled long-grain rice this recipe assumes. Current white long-grain is done in 10-12 minutes by this method, basmati in 8-10. Start testing at eight minutes rather than ten, and go by the bite, not the clock.
- "Galloping boil"A hard boil is deliberate — it keeps the grains tumbling so they do not settle and stick. Partly uncovering is the whole trick to preventing a starchy boil-over; a lid ajar or no lid at all is fine.
- Steaming in the colanderThis is the step people skip and then wonder why the rice is wet. The recipe gives no oven temperature — a coal range would have supplied gentle residual heat. Put the drained rice in its colander over the pan, or in a low oven with a cloth on top, and let the surface moisture evaporate for five to ten minutes. The cloth absorbs condensation instead of dripping it back.
- SaltHalf a teaspoon in four quarts is barely detectable in the finished grain. If you want the rice seasoned rather than merely cooked in salted water, use a full teaspoon or more per quart.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives about three cups cooked — four servings as a side dish, or two to three as the sweetened dessert suggested at the end.
Boiling rice in a large volume of water and draining it is often described as the older European and American approach, in contrast with the absorption method associated with much of Asia, where the measured water is cooked away entirely and nothing is poured off — though draining is itself traditional in parts of South Asia and Iran. Rice was sold loose from the sack by the pound and could stretch a small amount of meat or milk across a whole family. The closing line — plain as a vegetable, or with cream and sugar as a dessert — is characteristic of thrift writing of the period: one pot of one cheap ingredient, cooked once, sent to the table twice.