Happy New Year everyone! Its better late than never…procrastination seems to be my most favourite word for this year if not with everything at least with respect to blog. I’m not hoping nor promising that it will get better, lets leave it for the days to decide. Anyhow, coming to this post, which has been sitting as draft for nearly two months gets finally a way out. The one question people most commonly ask is “how do you cook rice”…I mean in the beginning I used wonder this is crazy simple why are they are asking me in the first place?
Coming from the background where we cook rice everyday. So it comes naturally to me, however after few attempts of pondering and observing closely on how I cook, I understood why people where asking questions…on how much water should I add? how do I know what is the right amount of water? why is it so sticky? why it soft? high heat, low heat? We are geeky people, who need a working instruction for almost everything. I usually say “folks go with your instinct while cooking”. The next question come, how do I know if the instinct is right ?
That’s when I decided to do a post on how to cook rice. Back home, we use medium raw grain (much lighter than basmathi) for everyday use, which is mostly cooked in pressure cooker and at times it is cooked in pot where starch is drained out after the rice is cooked. The basmati rice is mostly used only for making briyani, pulav or fried rice and some desserts.
Cooked Rice from Method 1
Jumping in to some fact about rice, the amount of water needed to cook rice depends on how old the rice is. The older the rice is more the water it requires, where as the newer varieties require quite a less amount of water. For example for new varieties you may need from one and a quarter cup to one and half a cup of water where as for a good old rice you will need two glass of water. So check the quality of the rice after you buy them. For the first run it is always the trail and error method.
The rice I get in Belgium is the local brand basmathi rice, not the quality that we get in India. And to eat basmathi rice every day is way too heavy for me so I use the cooking method 1, where I remove the excess starch (see the instruction in the recipe). Though removing the starch you are practically kicking some of the nutrient out, but this somehow makes the rice lighter almost to the feel of the normal rice like back home. The method 2 is the standard cooking method.
So fellas, hope this working instruction will help, happy (rice) cooking!
Cooked Rice from Method 2
Cooking Method 1
Cooking Method 2
Ingredients
- Rice - 150 gram
- Water - 1.5 liter
- Rice - 150 gram (Find a cup that fits 150 gram of rice, for example, one breakfast cup of mine fits 150 gram of rice)
- Water - one and half cup
- Masoor Dhal (Red lentils) - 150 gram
- Garlic - 2 pod
- Tomato - 1 large
- Turmeric - 1/2 tspn
- Salt - To taste
- Sambhar Powder - 1/2 tspn
- Water - according to desired consistency
- Fresh Chopped Coriander - 1/2 tbspn
- Oil - 1 tbspn
- Curry Leaves - 1 spring
- Dried red chilies - 2 split into halves
- Mustered seed - 1/4 tspn
- Cumin seed - 1/4 tspn
- Asafoetida - A Pinch
Instructions
- Wash rice in the running water.
- Soak rice for about 30 minutes.
- Bring 1.5 litre of water to boil in a big pot.
- Add the soaked rice into the boiling water.
- Bring the heat to medium and let it boil to 8 to 10 minutes. Till the grains are long and soft.
- Keep checking after 5 minutes, stir occasionally and check if the grains are growing longer and when it becomes soft. (Check the picture above)
- Turn of the heat.
- Place the spaghetti/pasta strainer in a medium size pot. (Check the picture above)
- Pour the cooked rice along with starch into the spaghetti strainer.
- And let it strain completely till all the starch is out, say for about 5 minutes.
- Wash rice in the running water.
- Soak rice for about 30 minutes.
- In a medium size pot, add the soaked rice and pour one and half cup of water. Close the lid
- Place the pot on high heat.
- When the water come to boil, in about 3 minutes, turn it to medium heat.
- After 5 minutes, when the rice starts to cook turn it on low heat.
- Let it be on low heat till the rice is cooked, stir occasionally.
- When the rice is cooked and rice grain is getting long, turn off the heat and let it be on hot plate for about 3 to 5 minutes. (Check the picture above)
- your rice may require more or less water according to quality of rice you use
- Soak lentil for about 30 minutes to one hour.
- Chop tomato coarsely.
- Cook lentils with turmeric, garlic and tomato in a pot with half a litter of water. (Or you could even pressure cook the lentils along with tomato, garlic and turmeric)
- Cook the lentils until it is tender and soft - it should be easy to mash.
- Mash the lentils.
- Tempering
- In a small pot pour the oil.
- Let the oil to warm.
- When the oil warms up, add mustered let it to splutter, then add cumin, dried chillies, curry leaves and asafoetida. Stir in warm oil for about 30 sec.
- Pour the tempering into the cooked lentils.
- Add salt and sambhar powder and water according to consistency and being it to boil.
- When its come to boil, add freshly chopped coriander and turn off the heat.
