Perfect White Rice

Rice is perfect medium for bowl of gumbo

From picking the crabs just so to cooking the okra just long enough to remove the slime factor, there is a lot to it. Not to mention, it can also get very expensive.

Indeed, a well-crafted cauldron of gumbo is a thing of beauty forever.

But it occurred to me last week that there is another part of the gumbo offering that gets short shrift, overlooked often in the whole flavorful saga that is gumbo.

It’s that white, fluffy stuff that goes into the bowl before the gumbo — rice — that is the unsung hero of the dish. Without rice, gumbo would be, well, soup.

Making a pot of rice can be one of the more daunting kitchen tasks, especially for kitchen novices. It easy to mess up, and there is a bit of math involved, but I’m going to teach you a quick, easy, no-fuss way to make perfect rice every time.

But before we do that, let’s first talk about rice a bit. There are several varieties of rice available at the grocery store and selecting the best one for your kitchen application can be unsettling.

Indeed, rice comes in may forms. You can buy everything from rough rice and brown rice, to plain white rice and black rice. There is red rice, sweet rice, arborio rice and basmati rice. There is even such a thing as wild rice, which isn’t rice at all.

For purposes of this discussion, we will limit our focus to plain old polished white rice. Even then, it comes in different sizes — short, long and medium grain.

I prefer medium grain rice in a gumbo, because the grains puff up, the perfect medium for a gumbo. The thick gumbo juice sticks to the grains just right.

Let’s stop right here for a second. If you own an electric rice cooker (and why don’t you?) then making perfect rice every time is easy. Add rice and water according to directions and you’re set. (We own three of them, and they are indispensable; they also make a great Father’s Day gift — hint, hint.)

If you don’t have one, don’t fret. Making rice on the stove like cooks have done for centuries isn’t that difficult. It’s just water, rice and that’s it.

The biggest pitfall for novice rice cooks is ending up with gummy rice, rice that looks like wallpaper paste.

Rest assured, gummy rice won’t kill you, it’s just not nearly as good as fluffy rice. I’ve eaten more than my share of the gummy kind over the years, and I’m still here.

~ How to: Cook Perfect White Rice on the Stovetop ~ - Kitchen ...

Sometimes we cooks take the simplest of things for granted.  We intuitively know what spices, herbs, vegetables and/or fruits to add to a pot of perfectly-cooked, fluffy white rice to turn it into a spectacular side-dish.  We instinctively use this inexpensive grain as a foil to stretch a meal that feeds a family of four into a meal that feeds six-eight.  We grew up eating it, we make it for our families, we keep it on hand in our pantries, we order it in restaurants and we don't talk about it very much.  After all... it's just rice.

Yesterday on Kitchen Encounters Friday's  ~ Culinary Q&A & Kitchen Therapy Too ~ , I answered a rice cooking question from a reader.  She had angst about her ability to cook white rice properly, in order to serve my recipe for ~ Provencal Seafood Stew w/Lemon Rice ~ (found in Categories 2, 11, 14 & 21) to her family for Easter.  I adequately answered her question yesterday, but I decided to take today (Saturday) to write a full-blown post centered around cooking perfect white rice on the stovetop, because:  let's all be honest with each other, we've all had bad rice days.  When I was a new cook, I knew a bit about cooking rice, because I had watched my grandmother and mother do it a lot, but I must admit, if I hadn't seen them do it and listened to some of their instructions, it wouldn't have taken me very long to experience that properly cooking rice can be a bit tricky... not hard, just tricky.

Before writing my Kitchen Encounters response to her question, I did a little research in my library.  I opened about 6-7 cookbooks to see how other writers describe cooking rice.  I was surprised to find out that most give vague directions at best:  "bring 4 cups of water to a boil, add 2 cups of rice, cover and simmer until rice absorbs all moisture".  While that statement is true, it is what's NOT said or explained that gets inexperienced cooks into trouble.  So today, with this blog post, I'm hoping to turn your bad rice days into nice rice days!!!

Let me start by saying that all rice is not created equal, and it has NOTHING to do with brand name . When you are buying white rice, choose the longest grain you can find, with extra long-grain being my first choice.  I didn't always know this, and apparently, this was the biggest cause for my rice problems. Then, four years ago I did a celebrity chef demonstration with/for Chef John D. Folse, CEC, AAC and author of The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine.  Without going into any detail, he said to me, "if you're looking for fluffy rice, the longer the grain, the better end product." I have since schooled myself on different types of rice, which all contain different types of starch, which makes all of them cook and fluff up differently, and, they all have their place in this food world.  For instance, medium-grain white rice cooks up creamy, while short-grain white rice cooks up sticky and creamy.  In Melanie's Kitchen, there are applications for them all.  That being said, when it comes to cooking fluffy white rice, Chef Folse's comment sums it all up in a nutshell.

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