It’s what I was taught growing up. Possibly my (Chinese) father’s personal preference. Cooked rice is not supposed to fall apart into individual grains.
The rice at Chinese restaurants was always sooooooooooooo much better than the rice my mother cooked. Sometimes if she wanted to serve rice, when we were still in Manhattan, she’d send my father down the street to get just some plain rice, which at the time cost about 50 cents.
It should be soft and clumpy in my opinion so it can absorb sauce better.
Hence Uncle Ben’s = abomination.
Some rices must be very sticky to work with their cuisine. Other rices must not clump at all to work with their cuisine.
Neither sticky nor non-sticky is wrong, but “rice” is a huge category encompassing multitudes. Good rice is the kind that fits your cuisine. Great rice is when you cook the good rice to the correct doneness and stickiness.
It took my Chinese mother in law a decade or so to understand that a polo/pilaf/biryani is not badly prepared (undercooked & under-hydrated) rice.
It took her a lot longer to understand that tahdig is the desired result, not a complete failure in cooking.
I could certainly see opportunity for cross-cultural hijinks between your and your wife’s respective extended families.
Unless i am eating with chopsticks, i don’t care a lot whether the rice is clumpy or each grain is separate. I do want it to be soft and tasty, not hard and dry.
I usually make jasmine rice. For a small quantity, i use twice as much water as rice. For a large quantity, 1.5 it’s usually okay. But with a small quantity, you need some extra water because some of it boils off.
I drop everything in a pot, maybe give it one quick stir. I bring the water to a full boil, open the lid so it doesn’t boil over and make a mess, then i turn the heat to the lowest setting, return the lid, and ignore the rice until the rest of supper is ready. It’s rarely perfect. It’s always fine.
(Brown rice and wild rice take longer to cook. With wild ride i use a 3:1 ratio and expect to drain off some water after the rice is cooked.)
If you are still trying to rescue to undercooked rice, I’d add some water (maybe a quarter cup of water, or a little less), their or in the microwave in a covered container. (You can cover a bowl by putting a plate over it) Hearing it to a boil, and then leave it covered tightly for 15+minutes. It won’t be perfect. But it will be good enough to eat with the rest of your leftovers.
That’s a function of the type of rice. The two main kinds of starch in rice are amylose and amylopectin. The latter is much stickier than the former. The rice used in Chinese and Japanese cooking has more amylopectin and less amylose, so the grains tend to stick together, making it easier to eat with chopsticks. Other types of rice, like basmati, have more amylose and less amylopectin, so the grains tend not to stick together. There’s a type called “sticky rice” where the starch is almost entirely amylopectin, so the grains really cling to each other (you can use balls of sticky rice to mop up sauces without them falling apart). Converted rice (like Uncle Ben’s) isn’t sticky at all.
So if you use the right type of rice, you won’t have to depend on rice powder to make it sticky enough to eat with chopsticks.
Today the purpose of rinsing is to wash off the surface starch if you don’t want your rice to stick. Decades ago it was to wash off the talc, used as a polishing agent and to make the uncooked rice look whiter. When the talc was suspected of causing stomach cancer, due to asbestos contamination, it’s use was pretty much discontinued in the US.
Well, “that rice-like grain that I really enjoy”. LOL
Kinda like tomatoes, the botanical fruit that’s a culinary vegetable. “Wild rice” is a culinary rice that’s a botanical grass.
I use the very same method. A 1:1.5 ratio of rice to water. Bring to rapid boil, then turn heat low until water is fully absorbed. Easy peasy.
In my wife’s family, you’re not proficient at using chopsticks until you can pick up a single grain of rice with them. That’s just user competence, though. The rice itself is supposed to hold together, but not be so moist that it doesn’t soak up the sauce.
All rice is grass, so that is not really saying anything. @susan’s point is that the “wild rice” is usually a different genus— not to be confused with “brown rice” (or purple rice, etc.)
The usual advice is to rinse ordinary milled rice to wash off surface starch and other debris that accumulated during the milling process, which tends to produce a mushy or gummy texture. Converted rice is parboiled in the husk and doesn’t need to be rinsed. Of course if sticky rice is your objective then suit yourself!
By who? Many years ago I was at a tasting at Pusateri’s, a world-class upscale boutique grocery. I forget what was on offer, but it was being served with rice, and I commented on how great it was. The tasting was being conducted by a chef from a renowned restaurant, and he mentioned that Ben’s Original (at that time still called Uncle Ben’s) was the only rice he ever used in his restaurant. By then I had already been using it for years and fully agreed. Unless I need a specialty rice for some specific purpose, Ben’s Original converted white rice is the only rice I ever use.
For decades Uncle Ben’s was the best-selling rice in America and probably still is, which by itself doesn’t mean anything, but maybe it led to those with snobbish inclinations to believe that anything very popular couldn’t possibly be any good. Though this is true for McDonald’s, it isn’t true for Ben’s converted white rice. Besides the added nutrition from the parboiling process, it’s very forgiving in terms of using too much liquid or overcooking or just letting it stand a long time, and just tastes really good and firm, almost regardless of what you do to it. With vegetable broth instead of water and dried porcini mushrooms – one of my standard flavoured-rice recipes – it makes a great flavoured rice, too.
One can readily understand that by “good” you mean “my preference,” but it seems to me that you tarnished your case by asserting your own snobbishness.
I get it. In another thread I confessed a similar defense for my enjoyment of yellow mustard. And I also get that claims of product superiority and product abominationism are just the conversational style of this forum, but good lord folks, sometimes it seems as though we’re getting hurt feelings when someone else doesn’t care for something we like. The only “goodness” here is our own preferences.
Pretty much the unanimous opinion of the Chinese community in my part of the Philly suburbs in the 1960s. Admittedly a very small group at the time consisting of a few professionals and Chinese restaurant owners.
Of course there are personal preferences in food. There are also preferences that are common across cultures, or within certain times and places. I’ve merely provided a few data points supporting my contention that my particular preference here is broadly considered a superior product.
I think you’ve already acknowledged the likely reason for that. Rice that is sticky and gummy is easier to eat with chopsticks and would understandably be the preference for those who do so. Ben’s Original is definitely not like that – the grains tend to remain separate and relatively firm even if accidentally overcooked. To the majority of Western culinary preferences, this is broadly regarded as a feature and in fact a fairly important one. If you have to be super-cautious about not overdoing your rice, you risk ending up like the OP with undercooked rice.
I was just objecting to the term “abomination” being used to describe an excellent and versatile product like Ben’s Original, which might – for all the wrong reasons – discourage someone from trying it.
To be clear, one cannot make any rice with reckless abandon. Since I don’t have a rice coooker, I make Ben’s Original in a heavy saucepan making sure to turn down the heat to medium-low once it’s almost boiling, and then simmer for 15 minutes. After that is when Ben’s comes into its own. You can turn off the heat and it can sit there in a warm saucepan for hours and still come out perfect! It also reheats very well in the microwave, retaining all its original qualities.
I disagree. I can get a batch of rice underway in less than a minute. One measuring cup of Mahatma or similar white rice into the rice cooker. Two of the same measuring cup of water into the rice cooker. Cover rice cooker, press start. Twenty minutes or so the rice cooker turns off, resulting in IMHO perfectly cooked rice every time. Not mushy, not gummy but grains with just the right amount of stickiness.
Once the process is established repeatability is assured. The key is the very simple rice cooker.
“Abomination” I got from the excellent Chinese chef at the restaurant we frequented when I was a kid. I think he was sick and tired of complaints that his rice was not like Uncle Ben’s.