How to cook rice without a rice cooker
Our life is made easy by technology, and cooking rice is made easy with rice cooker. Just add the right amount of water (see url) ,and on the power, and you get your rice in 20-30 mins. But what if you are in situation when you don’t have a rice cooker?
Here is how you do it. Prepare the rice and water as usual (see url) inside a cooking pot with cover or lid. It will be good if the lid is made of see through glass so that you can see without lifting the lid. Put the pot on stove and leave it to boil. Once the water started to boil, turn down the flame to low and continue to let it boil. When the water level is now below the surface of the rice, ie you will be seeing the half cooked rice exposed with lots of bubbles bubbling out of the surface, this is the time you have to lower the flame to the minimum and this will be the time the rice absorbed all the moisture and get cooked. Once completely dry, off the flame and best leave the lid closed for another 10 minutes. Be careful that if you did not turn off the flame in time, you might burn the bottom. But rice cooked in this way always leaves behind a layer of hardened rice crust sticking the bottom of the pot. This is normal, and some people like the slightly burnt fragrance of the rice, and some Chinese recipes deep fry this crust and make it into a dish.
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I tried before using this way & the bubbles overflowed out of the pot. I even have problem cooking porridge this way.
The pot has to be deep enough. As a guide, before cooking, the water level should be at most fill up to half the pot, if not lower. The reason is that when it boils the starch is release into the water, sticky liquid tends to overflow because the bubbles do not break up easily to release the steam as they rise.
Especially cooking porridge, its best to keep the lid half open (ie tilt it to a side). This allow the cooler air to flow in to cool down the bubbles when they rise, and hence allowing them to burst and release the steam before reaching the rim on the pot.
When you are cooking rice this way, it will be best in the stainless steel pot (zebra or … will not work as the base is too thin) at the point where the water is boiling turn to the smallest flame and leave it for about 10 min where you will see that it reach the state mentioned drying with bubbles. Here you can off the fire as the thick base stainless steel pot will continue the rest of the cooking. Save energy as gas is cheaper then electricity, my home cook it this way everyday