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Steamed Rice
1 cup of rice 1 teaspoon salt 1 quart boiling water or scalded milk Cook as other cereal, stirring occasionally with fork to prevent sticking. Let it steam in a double boiler 45 minutes. Put in colander and pour cold water over the rice to wash off the sticky substance. Put colander over the lower part of the boiler again and allow the steam to thoroughly dry the rice.
This is the old two-stage method: cook the rice loose in a large volume of liquid, then rinse and steam-dry it so the grains stay separate. It works, but the proportions and timings assume rice quite unlike what is sold now.
- The hinge: rinse then dryThe cold-water rinse after cooking is what makes this method produce distinct grains rather than a mass. Returning the colander over the simmering water to dry the rice in steam is equally important — skip it and you have wet rice.
- Liquid ratioOne cup of rice to a quart of liquid is about twice the liquid a modern absorption method uses, and the surplus is meant to be drained away rather than absorbed. Do not treat this as a pilaf ratio.
- TimingForty-five minutes reflects the gentle indirect heat of the double boiler, and possibly a drier milled rice than we buy now. Current long-grain white rice is tender in 15 to 20 minutes in abundant water; test a grain rather than trusting the clock, or it will collapse.
- Enriched riceMost white rice sold in the United States since the 1940s is enriched with vitamins applied to the surface. Rinsing and draining removes much of that coating — a real loss with this method, though not a safety issue.
- "Cook as other cereal"This points back to the book's general cereal method: liquid brought to the boil and the grain stirred only occasionally with a fork. Heavy stirring breaks the grains and releases the starch the rinse is meant to remove.
- Scalded milkScalding was routine before pasteurisation was widespread, and heating milk gently still keeps it from catching and scorching on the pan bottom.
- Double boilerAny heatproof bowl or colander set over a pan of simmering water will do, provided the base does not touch the water. The point is gentle indirect heat and steam, not a specific vessel.
- YieldOne cup of raw rice gives about three cups cooked — four modest servings as a side dish, or the base for a rice pudding or croquettes elsewhere in this section.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and given free to policyholders, part of a broad early-twentieth-century campaign in which insurers issued health, hygiene and household pamphlets to their customers — cheaper, the reasoning went, than paying claims. Its recipes are accordingly plain, economical and heavy on cereals, which were promoted as cheap sources of energy for working families. The rinse-and-steam treatment here reflects a long-standing Anglo-American conviction that well-cooked rice meant dry, separate grains, in contrast to the sticky or creamy results prized in much of Asia and in Italian cookery; the "sticky substance" the recipe wants washed away is simply surface starch, and the effort spent removing it says a good deal about the period's ideal of what a plate of rice should look like.