Good rice is good food. It is flavourful, with a fine texture, and makes a perfect accompaniment to almost anything. Stinky, sticky rice has nearly none of the good characteristics of well-made rice. I have learned to love rice just by itself with a bowl of miso for breakfast. I offer this recipe with thanks to "Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art" by Shizuo Tsuji - no matter how entirely unfaithful my version is to the original.
This is a photo of my rice storage. I keep two types of rice. Koshi-hikari rice grown in Australia, which has a short grain, and a standard long grain rice. I use the short grain rice for risotto, sushi, and accompanying Japanese dishes (which I'm awfully fond of making at the moment), and I use the long grain rice for fried rice, accompanying Indian curries or Mexican styled dishes. I don’t know if rice is expensive where you live, but where I am I can buy 10kg of rice for $12-15 AUD. 10kg of rice keeps me going for at least 3 months, and I’d wager I eat rice far more often than most Aussies do. So cheap!
The following instructions are for short grain rice, but can be used for long grain rice also. Long grain rice absorbs more water, so please use the higher suggested water content for longer grains. Tom likes to toast his long grain rice briefly before adding hot water to the pan, but I don't go in for that kind of caper. Everyone's got their favourite way of making rice, and this is mine.
Method:
1. Allow 1/2 cup of uncooked short grain rice per serving.
2. If possible wash your rice well in advance (30 minutes to an hour beforehand). Tsuji says: "to wash, put rice in a large bowl and set it the sink for convenience. Cover the rice with cold water from the tap and stir quickly with your hands for about 30 seconds until the water becomes milky. Never let the rice stand in this milky water... Pour off milky water and wash again with fresh water from the tap. Repeatedly wash until the water is almost clear. It takes about 5 minutes of washing, pouring off, and washing to clean rice sufficiently. The penalty for rice washed to hastily is "smelly" rice." However, for those of us who don't have time to labour quite so much over our rice, I have found rinsing thoroughly under a quick running tap in a sieve for a minute or so to be sufficient enough for me (though I am probably not as discerning as Tsuji-san.)
3. Put your rinsed and dried rice in a deep pot with a tight fitting lid. Your lid should not allow any steam to escape. Australian rice is quite dry and requires quite a lot of water to re-hydrate it to its tasty best, and so I find that 1 3/4 to 2 cups of water for each cup of rice is a good formula.
4. Boil the kettle. Measure your boiled water into your pan. Add your washed rice. Turn the heat up high and let the water come to a fast boil. A white starchy liquid will bubble from under the pot lid. When the starchy bubbles cease, reduce the heat to very low and cook it gently until all the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. It doesn't take long and I recommend having a peak after about 10 minutes of cooking, but you should use your judgment and your nose as to when you have your first peek. Do not peak too often as you will allow too much moisture to escape from the pot. To make sure all of the liquid has been absorbed, lift the pot from the burner and tilt it to the side to reveal whether there is any water hiding under the rice.
5. Once the water is all gone, turn off the heat and allow the rice to stand on the burner for 20 minutes before fluffing. As Tsuji states: "during this interval, the grains are allowed to "settle," and the cooking process is completed by the heat retained in the rice and the walls of the pot." Don't lift the lid. Just let it rest.
6. Once it has rested, "fluff" the rice by using a rice paddle (if you don't have one, a wooden spoon will have to do), and use a sideways, cutting motion to separate the rice grains from each other slightly. This way you will end up with lovely, light, textured rice rather than glugy, gluey rice. Keep the rice covered in the pot until time to serve.
*Note: I don't always get it perfect. Sometimes I get distracted and the rice gets a little burnt on the bottom. Don't panic if your rice gets roasted on the bottom. Just don't mix it in with the other rice. There are some recipes that call for the rice crust. I'll have to try them, but I only just read about them the other day...
