That’s becoming our kitchen’s standard I-don’t-feel-like-cooking-but-let’s-not-get-pizza meal: “rice with stuff.” It’s sort of a half-assed version of a donburi or a bibimbap — which are, as I said, a bowl of rice with stuff on top.
I know the traditional way to make rice goes something like this:
Put the rice in a bowl and wash it with cold water. Repeat washing until the water becomes clear. Drain. Place the rice in a pan or rice cooker and add water. Let the rice soak in the water at least 30 min. One hour is ideal.
Now, I’ve already mentioned the half-assed nature of this meal… is it really necessary to soak the rice for an hour? Am I missing out by merely giving it a wash (not until the water becomes clear but close to it) and cooking it?
Edited to add: I guess I wasn’t clear on what sort of rice I meant. I’m referring to short(er) grain Asian types of rice, not long grain rice. Here’s a set of instructions like the one I referred to above.
19 September 2007 at 10:30 am
I have never heard of soaking rice.
I don’t even always rinse it, I read somewhere that can take away the “enriched” aspect, so I rinse it sometimes.
Soaking? Who knew. If we were wrong, so am I.
19 September 2007 at 10:41 am
I dump rice in a saucepan with the requisite amount of water, bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes.
I’ve never rinsed nor soaked. Never heard of such a thing. Beans get soaked, sure, overnight, but rice? Maybe wild rice, which isn’t really rice, but not white or brown rice.
19 September 2007 at 11:22 am
I edited the post to reflect that I meant short grained Asian rice, not long grain rice.
19 September 2007 at 11:25 am
Oh, well, sure, that’s different! : o )
19 September 2007 at 11:58 am
As a daily consumer of rice – including the short-grained kind – I have never heard of soaking it. (My mother would say: “where got that kind of TIME?”) Rice, rinse briefly if desired (it tastes the same either way IMO), pop the rice cooker. You’re done 20 mins later.
Btw, rice-with-stuff describes my dinner every single day growing up, and my lunch every single day now (ever since I moved to an office in a part of town where lunch pickins are slim). Somehow I’m not yet sick of it.
19 September 2007 at 12:15 pm
I blame Japanese housewives with nothing better to do than to wash rice and soak it for an hour.
I usually rinse/wash it a bit — when I don’t, it tends to foam up (and over the sides and onto the countertops).
19 September 2007 at 12:19 pm
I always rinse short grain rices once or twice but I never soak.
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19 September 2007 at 3:08 pm
I am a rice rinser.
Lately JB and I are making a lot of longer grain brown rice in our cooker. It always bubbles up and over and spits everywhere. Rice slime – who knew? Our rice to water ratio keeps inching up to 1:3 otherwise it’s still crunchy. We have an 8- or 10-cup capacity and never make more than 1.5 cups of rice at a time, so it’s not overflowing per se. But it always makes a huge mess.
Do you think soaking would help?
I had friends who would put water and rice into cooker in the morning and start it cooking when they got home. That seems like a recipe for mush. Care to try it?
19 September 2007 at 6:41 pm
Brown rice is the devil. That is exact same thing that happened to me when I tried to cook brown rice. I know some of the fuzzy logic cookers have a “brown rice” setting, but mine’s just a straightforward cook/warm one.
I don’t know if rinsing/washing/soaking would help brown rice or not.
I’m not going to let it soak all day, though. That sounds kinda nasty.