The Facts of Rice

Mom- this post is for you!!

Growing up in Louisiana, we had rice at almost every meal, be it our family standard of red beans & rice or a special treat of crawfish etouffee.  And now that we live in Guam, there is rice at EVERY meal (even breakfast- and if you haven't had an egg over rice, you really, really must try it).

Although rice is a common and basic grain, many people are intimidated by cooking it.  They don't  know how to cook it without contraptions like steamers or rice makers.  The thing is, you can make it quickly and easily (and nope, I'm not talking about insta-rice from a box) on your very own stove top as long as you have a saucepan with lid.

22 Minute Rice (makes about six 1/2 cup servings, if you need more just remember that for every amount of uncooked rice you use, you need to add twice as much liquid)


2 C hot water (you can also use stock or broth or a combination)
1/8 tsp salt (add more salt if using unsalted butter)
1 C Long Grain Rice (not parboiled)
2 tbsp butter

Step 1:  Set kitchen timer to 22 minutes.

Step 2: Pour hot water into sauce pan, make sure burner is set to highest heat setting.  Add salt.

Step 3:  Add rice

Step 4:  Add butter.

Step 5:  Bring to a boil.  The water should be boiling when the timer has 16 minutes left.

Step 6:  Once water is boiling, give a quick stir, making sure there is no rice sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Turn heat to lowest setting and cover pan.

Step 7:  When timer goes off, voila!  Perfect rice (it may be a little moist on the bottom, just fluff with a fork).  If you don't like sticky rice, cover and let sit on stove until ready to serve.

Tonight, to spice it up, I put a small dab of butter, a little bit of garlic powder, freshly ground black pepper and Parmesan cheese.  Sometimes I add peas and cheese, a lot of times I just serve it straight out of the pot.  And tonight, I set some aside to serve with milk and sugar tomorrow morning.

While we're on the subject of rice and so many of us are fortunate to have all the rice we want, many people around the world do not.  There's a website, www.freerice.com where you can play an entertaining vocabulary game and for every answer you get correct, rice is donated to a country in need.  Snopes has verified that this site is true to its word.  I am NOT being compensated in any way for mentioning this site, I just found it when I googled something about rice.

Oh and Mom, since you inspired this post, by teaching me how to cook rice this way and then telling me you forgot how to do it since you only use Minute Rice these days, I thought you'd like to see the little monkey who was helping me cook the rice...  And by helping, I mean climbing up my legs and onto the counter and savaging cookie crumbs from every surface he could find!