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Boiled Rice
Wash one-half cup of rice in at least three waters.
Have a quart of water boiling violently and add rice so gradually that boiling is not checked. Leave the saucepan uncovered and do not stir the rice. Add more boiling water if necessary. When rice is soft, drain in coarse sieve, letting hot water run over it freely. Drain, place in hot dish, sprinkle with salt and set where it will keep hot and dry. The oven with door open, or back of range will serve the purpose. Each kernel should be distinct if properly cooked. Where there is time to allow for re-heating, rinsing the cooked rice with cold water is to be preferred, then placing where it will dry and re-heat.
This is the open-pan, plenty-of-water method — rice treated like pasta rather than absorbed by measure. It still works, and it is forgiving of unfamiliar rice.
- The hinge: do not stirStirring abrades the grains and releases surface starch, which is exactly what makes rice gluey. The vigorous boil keeps the grains moving on their own.
- Ratio and yieldHalf a cup of raw rice in a quart (4 cups) of water gives roughly 1 1/2 cups cooked — two modest side portions. Scale the water generously rather than exactly; the excess is drained away.
- TimingThe book says only "when rice is soft." For modern long-grain white rice that is about 12 to 15 minutes at a full boil; parboiled or converted rice runs longer, 18 to 20. Bite a grain rather than watching the clock.
- Which riceBest suited to long-grain white rice, which is what the method flatters. Do not use it for arborio, sushi rice or any short-grain variety where the clinging starch is the point. Brown rice needs 35 to 45 minutes and does not dry out the same way.
- Washing in three watersStill worth doing with rice sold loose or unenriched — it carries off loose starch and milling dust. Enriched packaged rice in the United States has vitamins dusted onto the grain, so rinsing washes some of that off; the texture gain is usually the better trade.
- The hot rinse and the drying stepRunning hot water over the drained rice washes off the last of the free starch. The "back of the range" is a warm spot on a wood or coal stove; a 200F oven with the door ajar, or an uncovered pan over the lowest burner for a few minutes, does the same work of driving off steam.
- The cold-water versionRinsing cold stops the cooking dead and is the better method if the rice is being held or reheated — the same logic as cooling rice for a salad or fried rice.
- Cooled rice and food safetyIf you use the cold-rinse-and-reheat option, refrigerate the rice promptly rather than leaving it out to dry for hours. Cooked rice held at room temperature is a known medium for Bacillus cereus.
Boiling rice in abundant water and draining it was the standard English and American treatment through the nineteenth century, and "each kernel should be distinct" was a common stated ideal in cookbooks of the period — a contrast to the soft, starchy rice puddings and rice soups that occupied the sweet end of the same books. Rice of this sort was understood in a northern American kitchen as a plain accompaniment to meat, in the same category as boiled potatoes. The instruction to finish the rice at the open oven door or the cool back of the range is a fingerprint of the coal or wood range, which offered a continuous gradient of heat across its top and no way to set a number. Absorption cooking, familiar now from pilaf and from rice cookers, was long established in Indian, Persian and Southeast Asian cooking before it became the default in American home kitchens in the twentieth century.