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Boiled Rice--Japanese Method
1 cup rice 5 cups boiling water 1 1/2 teaspoons salt Wash the rice thoroughly by pouring boiling water over it and rinsing in several pans of cold water. To the actively boiling water add the salt and the washed rice; cover and set on the back of the stove where it will boil slowly for fifteen minutes; then place in the oven, still covered, for fifteen minutes more. At the end of this time, each grain should be soft and tender, yet whole and distinct.
A plain absorption-and-steam method from a wartime meatless kitchen, written for a coal range with a cool back plate and a warm oven. Two things need translating: the stove geography and the oven temperature, which the original never gives.
- "Back of the stove"On a range, the back plate was the coolest spot, holding a pot at a bare simmer. On a gas or electric hob, use the lowest setting that keeps a few lazy bubbles going, lid on.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable modern reading, since the covered pot is only being held and steamed, not browned.
- The water ratioFive cups of water to one of rice is far more than the grain absorbs. Nothing in the recipe says to drain, so expect a quantity of starchy liquid at the end; pour it off before the final oven stage if you want the separate grains the recipe promises.
- Total cooking timeThirty minutes is long for modern white long-grain, which is done in about eighteen. It may suit older, drier milled rice better; brown rice would need considerably longer than thirty minutes. Check at fifteen minutes rather than trusting the clock.
- Why the washing mattersScalding then rinsing in several changes of cold water strips surface starch, which is what makes grains stick together. It contributes a great deal to the 'whole and distinct' result the recipe promises.
- The lid stays onBoth stages are covered. Lifting the lid to look releases the steam doing the work in the oven and gives unevenly cooked grains.
- SaltA teaspoon and a half for one cup of rice is assertive by modern habit, especially if the cooking water is drained off, taking some of it with it. Season to taste.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives roughly three cups cooked — four modest servings as a side, two if it is standing in for the meat, as this book intends.
Meatless Cookery is often associated with the American home-front literature of the First World War, when the Food Administration pressed households to save meat and wheat for export and cookbooks filled with beans, cheese, eggs and grain. This collection may date from before the US entry into the war and the creation of the Food Administration in 1917, so the wartime framing is uncertain. Rice was a favoured substitute: cheap, filling, domestically grown in Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, and unrationed. The "Japanese method" label reflects an Anglo-American fascination of the period with rice cookery from Asia, where the grain was understood to be handled with more respect than in Western kitchens that boiled it to paste; the ideal of every grain "whole and distinct" is repeated across English-language cookbooks of the era. The technique described here is not, in fact, how rice was cooked in Japan, where short-grain rice is washed, cooked in a measured, nearly equal volume of unsalted water, and left to steam off the heat. What the name really records is a Western cook borrowing the reputation rather than the practice.