A Short Horror Story About Plain White Rice

And One Way to Get it Perfectly Cooked Every Time

I gasped in horror and brought my hands to my face, covering my eyes. Through slightly spread fingers, I watched the scene unfolding as you might watch a gory sequence in Saw. I wanted both to be shocked and to erase the memory of what I had just seen, both at the same time.

Being related to Britain by marriage, I was well aware that it is not exactly known for its culinary excellence despite some outstanding exceptions. It isn’t now, and it certainly wasn’t in 2006 when this incident took place. Still, nothing could have prepared me for the first time I saw a British person – English, in this case – cook white rice.

They put a bit of rice in a large pot of water and brought it to a boil. Salt? No. But lack of salt wasn’t the offending part. The rice was boiled in the water, swimming around freely, like a school of fish in the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, until it was almost falling apart. Then, the cook, a celebrity cook might I add, simply poured the water and rice through a strainer and proceeded to serve the sopping wet rice. Thankfully it happened on television, where the person couldn’t see my reaction.

I had no words.

I was also convinced, in that moment, that this was not how people in the UK cooked rice but some abomination for the sake of being original or whatever. So, I asked my husband about it. Much to my continued horror, he confirmed that this was, in fact, the way his family cooked rice.

No words. But if Uncle Roger had been a thing then, I would have probably said “Haiyaa!” After all, his reaction was similar to mine when, many years later, he watched BBC chef Hersha Patel do the same thing with her rice for egg fried rice.

I am from a rice eating culture and ate rice virtually every day from first introduction of solid foods as a baby until I left home for the Navy at age 19. I watched women – always women – cook rice daily. In all of that time, I never, not once, saw anyone cook rice that way. There were slight variations, some people cooked rice on the stovetop, others in a rice cooker, some added garlic to their white rice, etc. But no one, no one, boiled white rice in large amounts of water and drained it before eating.

All I could think of as I watched the water drain from the strainer on TV was how utterly flavorless the rice must be. And how waterlogged. Like noodles you leave in the cooking water too long.

I had, in fact, grown up in a rice-cooking bubble, which contributed to the shock of watching someone boil and drain their rice like this. In the years since, thanks to extensive travel, the internet, and an unhealthy obsession with cookbooks, I have come to appreciate that there are many ways to cook plain white rice. Some types of rice also work better with different cooking methods. Laotians, for example, cook their white sticky rice by steaming it inside conical bamboo baskets called lao aep khao, set over a purpose-built pot. Other Asian people rely heavily on rice cookers (as do many Cuban households). Others still cook white rice in the oven, or even a pressure cooker.

Still, boiled and drained rice remains, at least to me, a culinary crime.

I don’t own a rice cooker because I simply don’t have the space in my New York City kitchen, and so I’ve had to master the art of cooking rice on the stovetop. I haven’t yet achieved “raspa” levels – the wonderfully crisp and toasted layer of rice at the bottom of the pot over which people in Cuban households fight – but that’s the final boss of cooking rice. I can’t even remember the last time I even saw raspa. It is not just burnt rice, or rice you accidentally cooked too long. It is an intentional cooking technique that is just not possible in rice cookers, which is how most Cubans in the US cook their rice because it’s just easier when you have to do it every day.   

In reality, making rice on the stovetop is not hard. It’s pretty easy, really. I’m going to tell you how to get perfect white rice every time, but before I do, a caveat. Just like garlic and vanilla, I measure salt with the heart. I do use Diamond Crystals Kosher Salt, which is pretty difficult to oversalt with. To share this recipe, I actually had to measure. But the thing with salt is that it is really a “to taste” deal. Only you know how much salt you like. By all means, add salt and taste the water!

Cooking rice is all about ratios, and I’ve found through trial that my preference for stovetop cooking is 1:2 rice to water by volume. And as far as cooking time, unless you are cooking very large amounts of white rice, 18 minutes is the right length of time.

Do note that jasmine rice cooks differently to other long grain rice and requires different amounts of water. For this specific recipe, I use basmati rice, but any other non-jasmine long grain rice widely available will do.

Plain White Rice

3 cups water
1 teaspoon canola oil or lard
1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt, or to taste
1 ½ cups long grain rice

In a medium pot bring the water with the salt and oil to a boil over high heat. Add the rice and stir. Bring to a simmer. Cover the pot, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook for 18 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat without taking the lid off. Let it sit for 10 minutes. Fluff the rice with a fork and serve.

Serves 4

Post Script

Right as I finished drafting this post, I had a birthday and, quite unexpectedly, received a rice cooker as a gift. It is a Zojirushi Neuro Fuzzy 5.5 cup rice maker. It is very fancy and produces excellent rice, but it takes nearly an hour to cook white rice! Longer if you are cooking basmati or another non-jasmine long grain rice. On the bright side, you can load the rice cooker ahead of time, program it for when you want to eat, and the rice will be done as if by magic.

Additionally, the markings inside the cooking bowl are for short and medium grain rice – which are the most commonly used in Japan – not long grain rice. This means that if you use long grain rice, you cannot rely on the markings for your water level and must instead measure the water too. For basmati, the ratio is 1:1 ¼ rice to water. The measuring cups that come with the machine are not actually 1 cup but rather ¾ cups, which is something else to keep in mind if you are used to measuring your rice with regular cup measures and want to get the same yield. If you are cooking long grain rice, since you already have to measure the water, you can just use your normal measuring cups instead of theirs; or any other measuring device, really, so long as you stick to the ratio.

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What I’ve Been Watching and Reading

• “How Japan Invented a New Cuisine” video by Matthew Li. The entire channel is pretty great, to be honest.

• “Is the ‘Future of Food’ the Future We Want?” by Jaya Saxena. I missed this piece when it was first published but I’m currently reading The Best American Food Writing, 2023 and this piece is in there. As a food writer, foodie, and certified drone pilot, I loved it.

• “An Entirely Serious Investigation into Kamala Harris’s Cookbooks,” by Joshua David Stein for Esquire.