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Rice Water
1 tablespoon rice 1 quart water or milk Sugar Wash the rice and put it over the fire with the quart of water. When it comes to a boil set it where it will simmer until the rice becomes a pulp. Let it settle; pour off and sweeten to taste. Serve either hot or cold.
A sickroom drink rather than a dish: a tablespoon of rice cooked to collapse in a quart of liquid, then strained off and sweetened. The whole point is the starchy liquid, not the grain.
- The hinge: cook it long past doneThe rice must break down completely so its starch dissolves into the water; the original simply says to simmer until the rice becomes a pulp, which with a tablespoon of rice in a quart of liquid means a long, bare simmer. Rice merely cooked tender gives up far less starch.
- "Let it settle; pour off"This means decant or strain the liquid and discard (or eat) the rice pulp. A fine sieve is quicker than waiting for the solids to sink.
- Rice typeA starchy medium- or short-grain white rice thickens the water best. Modern parboiled or converted rice releases much less starch.
- The milk versionMilk at a simmer for an hour will scorch on a thin pan and skin over on top. Use a heavy pot, stir the bottom occasionally, or set the pan in a water bath.
- Yield and evaporationUncovered simmering will reduce the quart; top up with hot water if it goes too far. The original gives no yield.
- SeasoningSugar to taste is all the original asks, but a strip of lemon peel or a small piece of cinnamon added during the simmer, and a pinch of salt at the end, does more for it than sugar alone.
- KeepingMade with milk it is a perishable dairy drink: refrigerate promptly and use within a day. The water version is better made fresh; it will thicken as it sits, so thin it with water before serving cold.
Rice water belongs to the old genre of invalid cookery, the small repertoire of gruels, barley waters, beef teas and arrowroot jellies that every general cookbook carried for the sick and for infants. It was valued as a bland, easily swallowed source of starch, and thin rice water long had a domestic reputation as a remedy for stomach upset — an idea that survives in the oral rehydration drinks used in much of Asia and in modern clinical interest in rice-based rehydration solutions, though the household version was never a measured medicine. Barley water was its better-known sibling.