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French Chef (Pick over rice add slowly)
Pick over rice; add slowly to boiling, salted water, so as not to check boiling of water. Boil thirty minutes, or until soft, which may be determined by testing kernels. Old rice absorbs much more water than new rice, and takes longer for cooking. Drain in coarse strainer, and pour over one quart hot water; return to kettle in which it was cooked; cover, place on back of range, and let stand to dry off, when kernels are distinct. When stirring rice, always use a fork to avoid breaking kernels. Rice is more satisfactory when soaked over night in cold water to cover.
This is the boiling-water method for rice, cooked like pasta in an open pot rather than by absorption. Fannie Farmer gives no quantities, so treat it as a technique rather than a formula.
- QuantitiesThe original names no amounts. For this method use at least 2 quarts of water per cup of rice, salted like pasta water — about 1 teaspoon per quart. One cup of raw rice yields roughly 3 cups cooked, serving four as a side.
- The hinge: keep the water boilingAdding the rice slowly so the boil never stops is the whole point. Grains dropped into water that falls off the boil sit and swell unevenly and turn gluey on the outside before the centre softens.
- Thirty minutes is for the rice of 1896Thirty minutes is for the rice of its day -- Long-grain white rice on a modern shelf is milled and dried to a consistent standard and cooks through in 12 to 18 minutes. Start testing kernels at 12. Brown rice does want 30 to 40 minutes.
- Old rice versus newThe distinction still holds but matters less now. Rice held a year or more is drier and thirstier; freshly harvested rice, sold in some Asian markets as new-crop, cooks faster and wetter. Judge by biting a grain, not the clock.
- Skip the overnight soakSoaking may have been insurance against hard, unevenly dried grain and against long cooking on a range; the original does not say why. It is unnecessary for ordinary white rice today and, combined with a shorter modern boil, risks mushy grains. A 20-minute soak is chiefly of value for basmati, to encourage the grains to lengthen.
- The hot-water rinsePouring a quart of hot water over the drained rice washes off loose surface starch so the grains stay separate. Use hot, not cold — cold water stops the residual cooking and cools the pot below the point where the rice will steam itself dry.
- "Back of the range" means low heatOn a wood or coal range the rear of the top was the cooler zone, where a covered pot would sit below a simmer. As a modern equivalent, set the covered pot over the lowest burner setting, or in a very low oven, for 5 to 10 minutes until the grains look dry and distinct.
- Use a forkStill sound advice. A spoon crushes the softened grains against the pot and releases starch; a fork lifts and separates.
Farmer's remark about old rice absorbing more water than new is a genuinely useful piece of observation from an era when rice arrived in bulk from the Carolinas or Louisiana and was scooped from a barrel, its age unknown to the cook. Her instruction to pick it over is a reminder that rice then commonly carried hulls, small stones and grit, which uniform modern milling has largely eliminated. The method here — abundant water, then draining and rinsing — treats rice as a starch to be boiled soft in water rather than as the foundation of a dish.