How to cook rice

Preparing the rice before cooking

The first thing to do in any case is to remove the rice starch, to do that: wash it as many times as necessary until the water comes out clean. If you don't want to wash it, another way to remove rice starch is sautéing it into oil or butter for a few minutes before putting it into the boiling water or broth.

If sautéing, you also can proceed this way: put some oil or butter into a pan, give heat and put the rice. Sauté for a few minutes and then put some boiling salty water.

"The rice have to be cooked, first with strong fire, so that, at the middle of the cooking process you can turn it down until it gets cooked."

The liquid where we are going to cook the rice must be always boiling. Then, after we put the rice into the water, you can stir it only once, being careful not to break the grains.

How to cook rice

The amount of liquid and rice follow this proportion: 1 measure of rice per 2 of water. If you want it with more liquid: half measure of rice per 2 – ½ of water. Cooking the rice this way, there will be no need to strain it, which is good because you are not going to eliminate the rice nutrients that remain into the water. If we notice that the rice needs more water to get cooked, we can add some more, but always boiling.

Cook the rice first with strong fire, so at the middle of the cooking process you can turn down the fire until the rice gets cooked. The cooking time is different depending from the rice kind, it can be 10 to 20 minutes. Is better to read the indications on the package.

When cooking rice is good to taste, in order to know when the grain is ready or good to your personal taste.

Also, we can turn the fire off while the preparation is still wet, and let it end the cooking resting with its own heat. Cover the pan with a clean cloth or a dishtowel, and letting it rest for about 8 minutes.