Home › Rice Is Nice › Boiling Rice by Slow Method
Boiling Rice by Slow Method
I CUP RICE I TEASPOON SALT 11/2 CUPS WATER Wash rice thoroughly. Drain. Place rice, water and salt in a covered, heavy kettle over a moderate fire. When the water boils vigorously, reduce the fire as low as possible. On a wood stove, set the kettle back off the direct heat; or an asbestos mat may be used under the pot to prevent burning. On a camp fire suspend kettle well above the coals. A bit of lard is often added to reduce the tendency of the water to boil over. At the end of about 40 minutes, all water should be absorbed. Let rice fluff and dry out ten minutes at the side of fire, turning kettle frequently so all sides of it will heat equally. Turn from the pot. Many people are especially fond of the brown crust, or au gratin, which is formed on the bottom of the kettle and may be detached and laid on the mound of rice.
If you don't like rice plain, remember that it is good mixed with meat gravy, with any kind of hashed meat in gravy, with melted butter mixed with a little peanut butter, with diced vegetables and some of their cooking liquor, with grated or melted cheese, with soft scrambled eggs, in fact with almost anything you happen to be making or have on hand. Leftover rice may be reheated by dropping it into boiling water again until heated, draining, and letting it stand to become fluffy just as you did before. But it is easier to fix it up as a vegetable in some tasty fashion; or to eat it with milk and sugar, cinnamon and canned fruit or a bit of dried fruit, such as dates, raisins, figs, etc., cut over it; or to make it into a rice pudding. Here are some suggestions:
A camp-and-woodstove method for absorption-cooked rice, written when a cook controlled heat by moving the pot rather than turning a dial. The technique still works on a modern burner, with two substitutions.
- Never use an asbestos matThe asbestos pads sold for stove tops through the mid-20th century shed friable fibres and are a known carcinogen. If you find one in an old kitchen drawer, do not use it; a cast-iron heat diffuser or simply the lowest setting on a gas burner does the same job.
- "Moderate fire," then as low as possibleBring to a hard boil over medium heat, then drop to the lowest simmer the burner will hold. The lid stays on the whole time — every lift costs steam the rice needs to absorb.
- The water ratio is tight1 1/2 cups water to 1 cup rice is at the low end of the modern range for long-grain white rice, where directions commonly call for anything from 1 1/2 up to 2 cups. It suits the very slow, sealed cooking described here; on a fast modern burner you may want the extra quarter cup.
- Forty minutes is for slow heat, not for modern riceMilled white rice on a conventional stove is done in 18 to 20 minutes, and 40 will turn it to paste. The long time here assumes heat so gentle the pot barely simmers. Brown rice does genuinely want 40 to 45 minutes and more water.
- The ten-minute rest is the hingeOff direct heat, lid on, the grains finish steaming and separate. Skipping it gives wet rice regardless of how carefully the water was measured.
- The crustWhat the recipe calls "au gratin" is the toasted layer that forms on the bottom — comparable to Persian tahdig or Spanish socarrat. A heavy pan and a minute or two of slightly stronger heat at the end help it form evenly rather than scorch.
- A bit of lardAny fat works — a teaspoon of butter or oil — and it does reduce boil-over. It also helps keep the grains distinct.
- YieldWith this tight ratio, one cup of raw rice gives about 2 1/2 cups cooked, enough for two to three servings as a side dish.
Absorption cooking of this kind — measured water, tight lid, no draining — was long established across rice-eating Asia and in the Carolina and Gulf rice country, while elsewhere in the United States rice was more often boiled in a flood of water and drained like pasta. For outdoor cooking the method has the obvious advantage that it wastes nothing and needs no colander: everything you carried in the pot ends up in the meal. The instructions for setting a kettle back on a wood range or hanging it above coals place the book in a period when heat control meant moving the vessel, and the long list of things to stir into the finished rice suits rice's role here as ballast for whatever gravy, cheese or dried fruit the cook happened to have.