How To Cook Rice

Cooking rice is one of those kitchen skills that is often overlooked by many due to the convenience of ready-to-eat, microwavable pouches that makes it so easily accessible and although I am all for convenience, there are many advantages to knowing how to cook it from raw. 

First of all, it’s even more convenient to buy a large bag that you can access whenever you feel like it. Rice in it’s microwavable form is often ‘single-serving’ which means you have to keep returning to the shops and buying more after only one or two uses. 

Secondly it is so much cheaper cooking it yourself. For example, a 1KG bag of Basmati Rice is around £1.79 from the local supermarket. If for every serving you use 50g, that’s 20 servings before you need to buy more! 

In terms of cost that works out to around 8.6p per serving! Compare that to a cheap microwavable rice at £1 (the branded version being £1.69) and on average you get 2 servings, that’s 50p per portion! 

Finally, as you’ll soon discover, it’s so easy and requires just three very basic ingredients, the rice, salt and water.

Being a fitness enthusiast, my goal is to eat small meals on a regular basis. The fact that I can cook a big batch of rice and then divide it amongst a number of containers really does make life so much easier, not to mention cheaper! 

I wish I’d learnt how to do this sooner because it really has made things so much better. Here’s how it’s done. 

Fill a small mug with rice and empty the contents into a small saucepan. 

The general rule is to double the quantity of cold water (use the same mug to measure it) and pour into the saucepan over the rice, so that it’s just covered. 

Season with enough salt and whichever other spices you like. 

Place the lid on and increase the heat to maximum so that the rice begins to boil.

Once boiling, reduce the heat to it’s lowest setting, set a 10 minute timer and leave the lid on throughout (if the contents seem to boil over, leave the lid ajar for a minute before putting back). 

After the timer has gone off remove the pan from the heat and leave the lid on for a further 3 minutes (you should start to see little holes within the contents). 

Finally remove the lid from the saucepan and carefully place a fork through the contents to fluff the rice up. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.