Thanks for the suggestions so far! I don’t have a slow or pressure cooker, so I’m going to try the microwave. Do I need to add any water?
If you’re talking about saving the original batch, you’ll need someome, but not as much as you think you do. Maybe a teaspoon to a tablespoon. Let the rice get back up to room temperature. Your goal is to produce a little steam to soften things up.
If you’re talking about starting over using a microwave, you need the same 1.5 water to 1 rice as a conventional stovetop If you’re using a full-size microwave (1000 watts or more) run it at 70% power.
My wife hasn’t cooked rice on a stovetop for years, favoring rice cookers and the microwave. But based on the description in the OP, she thinks you may not have gotten the water hot enough at the very beginning. Did you bring the water to a full boil, then turn it down to simmer?
Throw it away and start over.
We’ve collectively spent a lot of time = money trying to save your 25 cents of half-used mostly wrecked rice.
I generally successful with the old fashioned sauce pan method but it’s enough of a pain in the ass that I decided to get a cute little real Dash mini rice cooker. I’m on the road for a little bit so I won’t get to try it for a bit. I have high hopes.
I make my rice with chicken stock (made with Better than Bullion) and crushed saffron.
Did you use brown rice? It takes a lot longer to cook than white rice does.
I have one of this general kind of extremely basic, ultra-stupid rice cooker:
White, brown, or basmati, rinsed or not, it’s zero effort, zero thinking and perfect results every time. Utterly the opposite of a saucepan where each batch takes different amounts of monitoring for different amounts of time.
My old one disappeared in my breakup w wife #2. If I still had it, it’d be coming up on 40 years old and as good as the day it was born.
I’m not going to police people’s charitable donations.
It can also depend upon where in the bag you are. We buy basmati in 20 pound bags. The top of the bag will be fine without rinsing. But once you get about halfway down there’s a good bit of powder sifted through that will make the final result gluey if you don’t rinse it off. I assume this is just rice starch that has come off the grains above during shipping and storage. By the time I get to the bottom of the bag it takes quite a while to get the rinse water to run clear.
If I’m making kokuo rose or some other short grain for a Chinese or Japanese dish then I just let it be sticky. Sometimes sticky is good.
I’ve never rinsed the rice but I buy one pound bags (Jasmine).
Pour off the excess liuuid. Did you use a lot of salt or chicken stock? If not, stir in some milk, sugar and egg and make rice pudding out of it!
The rice that I use for virtually everything is Ben’s Original converted white rice (formerly “Uncle Ben’s”), and it’s pretty much foolproof, even without a rice cooker. Put a measured amount of it into a saucepan, add twice as much water, cover, bring to a boil while gradually reducing heat to medium-low, and simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and let stand for at least 5-10 minutes, but it can sit for a long time in a heavy saucepan so it can be prepared ahead of time while you fritz around with whatever roast type thing that needs careful timing!
Incidentally, the term “converted” refers to parboiling the rice by steaming while still in its inedible husk, which drives nutrients from the husk and bran into the core and makes it a more nutritious rice. Ben’s is more expensive than your typical bulk bags of rice, but well worth it IMHO.
Yeah. That’s how you make rice. It’s a few minutes more for the jasmine rice that I make. If you read the comments about this anywhere, for whatever reason, lots and lots of people don’t find it foolproof.
That’s interesting! I’ve never rinsed any type of rice and never had that happen. Maybe because I have a larger Zojirushi and only make, say, 5 cups’ worth? Idk.
The ONLY times I rinse any kind of rice before cooking is when I’m cooking for someone who I know grew up expecting every rice grain to stand alone, and then only if it’s someone I’m feeling especially indulgent towards. Those are usually also almost the only occasions that I cook milled white rice instead of brown or other bran-intact varieties.
I love rice and stickiness doesn’t affect my enjoyment in the slightest.
I am not an expert on sticky rice. Some people first soak it for hours, then drain and steam it. I have done it, and it came out okay.
I was raised to never rinse rice, and to cook it 2:1 water to rice. If you rinse the rice it is too hard to eat with chopsticks. A simple stupid rice cooker is nearly foolproof, it has a temperature sensor that stops the cooking once the water is all absorbed and the temperature rises above boiling. I can start a batch of rice and come back an hour later and the rice is still fine.
And Uncle Ben’s was considered Abomination.
Cooking on the stovetop needs monitoring. The only possible advantage is that you can use the toasted rice crust (guoba) to make sizzling rice - a tableside dish that used to be common in Chinese restaurants but that I haven’s seen in years (my father used to call it “Bombardment of Tokyo”).
You see that crust used to good effect with Persian rice. The opposite of undercooked.
@Marvin_the_Martian Can you 'splain more? This does not compute. ALL of the North Asia chopstick first countries (China, HK, Taiwan, Japan, Korea) rinse the rice before cooking, and last time I check they all use chopsticks (forks are for kweiloh’s 
).
The benefit of a rice cooker is that when the water is absorbed the cooker automatically switches from high heat to warm and will keep it that way for quite a while. It will sit there with no attention and be ready to go while you fix the rest of the dish/meal. You still have to get the water to rice ratio right, though.
I buy rice in the big bags too, and try to get he same kind each time. It is 1.6:1-- that is, 1 & 2/3 c. water to 1 cup rice for the white rice (basmati), and 2:1 for the brown rice. I make mostly brown for myself, but sometimes I want white, or a mix for company, and very occasionally I want white for myself if I’m using a recipe I’ve never tried before, and it calls for white.
Figuring out the exact right ratios for the rice in those bags was a bit of trial & error, and adding more to rice that was cooking, or having slightly mushy rice. But once you get it right for a bag (about three tries) you are good for the whole bag, and that’s a lot of servings.
That’s also why it’s good to get the same kind again, when you buy more. The ratio will be close to the last bag, usually.
If, for some reason, I have a different brand, my default is first to try 1.5:1 for white and 2:1 for brown.