Everyone knows what occurs whenever you overcook rice: Quite than a mound of fluffy, carb-y deliciousness, you find yourself with a layer of dried-out grains caught to the underside of your pot. It’s not good.
Overcooking rice—and getting it glued on to your cookware—is so, really easy to do. As somebody who manages to prepare dinner my rice for too lengthy a strong half of the time, I’m all-to-familiar with getting caught with a ruined dinner (and a pot that’s greater than somewhat worse for the wear and tear.) Once I complained about this to a kitchen-genius good friend of mine, they supplied a suggestion I hadn’t heard of earlier than, one that may save my pot and my dinner: Put your scraper down, and as a substitute encourage the rice to unstick themselves.
You try this by turning off the warmth, including a teaspoon or two of water to the pot, clamping the lid again on, and letting the rice sit undisturbed for 10 minutes. Overlook about attempting to scrape the singed grains off the underside of the pot, and as a substitute look forward to time to do its factor. Afterward, like magic, my good friend stated, the rice wouldn’t solely get unglued from the underside of the pot, however all the grains would even be completely salvageable for consuming.
I used to be skeptical at first that this is able to work. However the subsequent time I burnt my rice—ahem, simply three days later—I made a decision to offer it a strive. And it legit did the trick!
Due to my kitchen-savvy pal, I used to be now in possession of a useful cooking hack that has saved mealtime again and again.
Since I’ve by no means heard of this trick earlier than—and I’m a meals author!—I needed to see if it was pure luck, or if there was actually one thing behind the hack. So I tapped Barbara Wealthy, lead chef of culinary arts on the Institute of Culinary Schooling in New York, to see what’s happening right here.
In line with Wealthy, the steam was the star right here. Including the additional water to the rice supplied extra liquid to permit the grains to maintain steaming, and that steam was serving to the grains turn out to be unlodged from the underside of the pot. The end result? No extra stuck-on rice.
Nonetheless, says Wealthy, it’s not precisely a excellent repair: “The tip end result is perhaps somewhat bit squishy or mushy,” she added. That’s since you’re including extra water to the rice and letting it steam for longer.
TBH, I by no means seen any mushiness. The rice nonetheless appeared to have a great consistency to me—I used to be in a position to eat it with my regular stir-fries or bean bowls no prob—however then once more, I am no rice skilled (clearly!). Wealthy says that whereas my methodology was okay, I might undoubtedly be doing higher. For starters, I might simply scoop off the a part of the rice that wasn’t caught to the pot and eat that, then use my water trick simply to take away the stuck-on rice and get my pot clear.
