If You Want Fluffy, Tender Rice, Avoid This Mistake

If you’ve ever wondered why restaurant rice is so much better, the reasons are many; chefs often select higher-quality grains, cook them with butter, and heat them in either a specialised cooker or an oven. 

Those added steps exist because, like perfect-cooking eggs and chicken, achieving tender, fluffy rice on the hob is actually pretty hard. 

But if you don’t have a rice cooker, fret not. BBC Good Food has said that you can prevent “sticky”, gluey rice that forms a starchy mattress under your food might be easier than you think. 

Just try as hard as you can not to make a common mistake, they add. 

Don’t stir your rice 

“NEVER stir rice as it cooks, or it will break up and turn sticky,” the site reads. 

And the BBC isn’t alone in advising against the misstep. 

Speaking to Martha Stewart’s site, Chantheun Thanh, executive chef at seafood bar RAW*, said: “Many people stir rice while it’s cooking, but this can be a mistake. If you stir rice while it’s still cooking and rehydrating, the grains can break, resulting in multiple non-uniform pieces.” 

This makes your rice gummy partly because the smaller pieces mess with the cooking times of your grains (littler pieces may collapse into an overdone paste just as larger grains finish cooking).

The broken grains may also prevent steam channels, the little holes in your rice that appear as it cooks, from forming easily. That’s a problem, because these help rice to cook evenly.

Bon Appétit also says we should “never” stir rice as this releases starches into water. This is why risotto has a thicker, gloopier texture, which is ideal for that dish but unwelcome if you want fluffy perfection.

Any other tips?

Also speaking to Martha Stewart’s site,  Ann Ziata, chef at the Institute of Culinary Education, said another error could be holding your rice back from fluffy perfection.

Serving rice immediately after it’s cooked can make it soggy and clumpy. For the best results, she added, leave it in a pan off the hob; the steam will continue to hydrate it. 

Fluff your rice with a for before serving for the best result.