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An easier way to cook rice: Cook it like pasta
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It seems simple enough: Bring 2 cups of water to a boil in a 2 quart heavy saucepan. Add margarine and salt, if desired. Stir in 1 cup rice. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes or until all water is absorbed.
So how come, when you do exactly that, the rice never comes out right? It doesn't seem like too much to ask for - rice that is properly cooked, fluffy, not gummy or sticky... yet it's almost an unachievable goal.
Here's a suggestion: try cooking your rice like you cook your pasta. Forget everything you've ever heard about water-to-rice ratios. Rinse the rice in cool water first, just for 30 seconds or so until the water begins to run clear. Grab a big ol' pot, fill it up with lots and lots of water (at least 4 quarts), and throw in a little salt. Bring the water up to a boil and add whatever amount of rice you'd normally cook - don't change the quantity of rice at all. It's simply cooking in more water. For regular, long-grain white rice, let it boil for approximately 15 minutes. Start checking it around 10 minutes just to be sure it doesn't overcook. Once it's done, simply drain it like you would pasta. Return the drained rice to the pot and cover it, but don't put it back on the heat. Let it steam for about 5 minutes then simply fluff it with a fork.
For an extra burst of flavor, cook the rice in chicken or vegetable broth instead of water. Aromatics, like ginger or garlic, can also be added to the cooking water. Just be sure to leave them in big enough pieces that they can be easily removed when the rice is drained.
This same cooking method will also work with brown rice or quinoa, just be sure to adjust the cooking time accordingly (brown rice will take substantially longer to cook than white rice; quinoa will take just a few minutes longer than white rice).
If you like sushi, learn even more tricks with rice from the masters. Sekisui founder Jimmy Ishii and his master sushi chef, Yoshi, will be conducting a sushi workshop at Viking Cooking School, once in May and once in June. See this article for more information.
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