Everyone knows what occurs whenever you overcook rice: Moderately 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 stable 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 will save my pot and my dinner: Put your scraper down, and as an alternative encourage the rice to unstick themselves.
You do 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. Neglect about attempting to scrape the singed grains off the underside of the pot, and as an alternative look ahead to time to do its factor. Afterward, like magic, my good friend mentioned, the rice wouldn’t solely get unglued from the underside of the pot, however the entire grains would even be completely salvageable for consuming.
I used to be skeptical at first that this might work. However the subsequent time I burnt my rice—ahem, simply three days later—I made a decision to provide it a attempt. 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 wished 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 Training in New York, to see what’s happening right here.
In accordance 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 change into unlodged from the underside of the pot. The outcome? No extra stuck-on rice.
Nonetheless, says Wealthy, it’s not precisely a good repair: “The tip outcome could be 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 observed any mushiness. The rice nonetheless appeared to have a very good consistency to me—I used to be in a position to eat it with my common 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 may undoubtedly be doing higher. For starters, I may 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.
