8 How to Avoid Common Mistakes When Cooking Rice: A Step-by-Step Guide

Common mistakes when cooking rice can happen when you cook using a stove or rice cooker. 

Whereas there is a rice cooker that makes the process of cooking rice becomes easier. But the use still requires understanding of how to cook rice properly, so get the desired results.

Common mistake when cooking rice makes it not perfectly cooked. Whether the rice becomes mushy or hard, sticky, the bottom is charred, or cooked but uneven you can get from the mistake of cooking rice. So, avoid these cooking rice mistakes.

Here Homekitchenmagazine.com summarized from various sources about common mistakes when cooking rice.

Common Mistakes When Cooking Rice

Water dose does not fit

Lack of water can make rice hard, while most water can make it mushy like a pulp. Use a rice dose to get a suitable water size. If you don’t have it, you can use your knuckles. The general rule is that the water is twice higher than that of rice. But be aware that many or a little water depends on the type of rice.

Not washing rice before cooking

Not washing the rice first before cooking is also one of the common mistakes when cooking rice. This can result in the rice being sticky when cooked.

Rice rubbing together creates a fine starch powder. When this rice is immediately cooked (in contact with water), the powder will become very sticky, which causes the rice grains to stick together.

In order not to happen, we recommend that rice be washed first to remove the starch powder. You can also add oil or butter while cooking so that the rice is not sticky.

Treats all kinds of rice the same

Never cook rice in the same way. Each rice has different treatment. For example, brown rice requires longer cooking time and more water to cook it than white rice.

Not closing the pot meeting

The next common mistake when cooking rice is not to close the pan that is tightly used. If the pot lid is not covered properly, the steam in charge of the rice will be out. This can cause the rice to become too hard when cooked.

If the lid of the container to cook rice cannot close tightly, cover with a napkin or a clean cloth underneath.

Too Big Flame

The use of fire when cooking rice should also be considered. Often you get the bottom of the rice burnt when cooking. This is because you cook using a fire that is too big.

Therefore, try to cook the rice with low flame or the lowest flame when cooking. It should be steam from the water that works to spread the rice, not the fire from the stove. In addition, do not use the rice cooking ware too thin the bottom part.

Not stirring

After being perfectly cooked, the rice should be cooled, stirring from top to bottom. Given that rice is cooked in a span of up to 30 minutes, then cooling is important to take. Cooling by way of stirring from top to bottom and so on until it felt cold, the goal to separate the grain of rice one with the other, so as not to stick to each other when served.

Stir rice when it is just cooked

The next common mistake when cooking rice using stove is to stir the rice directly when it just cooked. This can result in rice cooked but uneven. Therefore, you should wait up to 15 minutes for the remaining heat to spread evenly. Don’t hurry.

Delicious

Generally, rice does taste bland, because we don’t add seasoning to it. However, if you want the rice to taste a little savory, we can add butter or salt when cooking. It’s great if using the broth as water to cook rice.

Read also: How to cook rice using microwave