Rice w/ Everything
Rice is incredible. It goes with everything, including other starches like noodles or rice cakes.
We love white rice and find that it is worth paying extra for better rice. For long grain Jasmine rice we like Lotus Foods Jasmine Rice. For short grain rice we like Tamaki Gold California Koshihikari Short Grain Rice. For the health conscious among us we recommend Tamaki Haiga Mai which is rice with only the bran removed instead of the bran and the germ removed like white rice. This rice is more nutrient rich but not quite as nutty as brown rice.
You can either eyeball the amount of water you need to make great rice or follow our family trick of getting the water line one pinky fingernail distance above the surface of the rice. It’s how we make rice many nights.
That said, if you want to make great rice every time, the key is fixing the water to rice ratio and there is only one way to do that, and that is to use a scale.
Recipe: Rice! for two (or one, no judgement)
Kitchen Scale any
Calculator any
Rice cooker any
Rice 200grams dry Jasmine Rice
Put the bowl of your rice cooker on your kitchen scale and tare the scale. Add 200g of rice. Rinse the rice in the rice cooker bowl; add water to the bowl, agitate the rice with your hand and pour out the cloudy water. Repeat until the water that you are pouring out of the bowl is clear, it usually takes 4-5 rinses.
Add fresh water to the bowl, place it back on the scale (do not tare the scale!) and weigh the rice with the water. We recommend a ratio of 1:1.3 - dry rice:water. Your scale should read 460grams (200 grams of the dry rice + 260grams of water).
Let the rice soak for 20 minutes (you can skip this in a rush). Turn on your rice cooker.
When the rice cooker is done ideally you let the rice sit for 10 minutes and serve...with everything!
If you prefer softer rice then increase the ratio to 1:1.4 or 1:1.5. If you like dryer rice, cut the ratio down to 1:1.2 or 1:1.1. Once you know the ratio you like you can make perfect rice every time.