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Cooking rice is so much harder than it looks, especially if you’re cooking in a pot rather than a rice cooker. You can cook it too long, add too much water, or add too little. Although there’s an easy oven trick for fixing mushy rice, it may be difficult to bring it back to the right consistency. Overcooked or scorched rice is even harder to rectify. So, if you’re going to make a mistake that you can quickly recover from, undercook it. The solution may be as close as your kitchen sink.
The appearance, taste, and texture of your rice will let you know immediately if it is undercooked. It will look dried out, will taste starchy, and have a hard crunch or chewiness to it. Undercooking rice can happen for several reasons: you turned the heat up too high, you uncovered the pot too soon or never covered the pot at all, or you didn’t use enough liquid. Regardless of why, there is a simple solution: Add a quarter to a half cup of water (you’ll need to estimate based on how dry the rice is and how much rice is in the pot), re-cover the rice, cook it on a low heat for five more minutes, and remove it to let it cool for 10 minutes. If you’ve cooked the rice in something other than water, like coconut milk, white wine, or chicken broth, you can still add water. Or, go ahead and add more of the liquid you already used.
Other methods risk drying out the rice
There are a couple of other ways to try to finish rice that has been undercooked. You can steam it in the microwave by transferring it to a microwave-safe bowl, covering it with tightly-sealed plastic wrap, and cooking for two minutes. However, this involves more bowls and the rice might not have enough moisture to steam and will dry out instead. If you don’t mind transferring the rice, you can also place it flat in a glass baking dish and heat it for 10 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. But again, you risk drying out the rice.
You can also try using a rice cooker from the get-go. The science behind rice cookers pretty much ensures that rice comes out perfectly every time. If you don’t have room for another large appliance, you can purchase the Toshiba Small 3-cup Rice Cooker or pull out your Instant Pot Multi-Cooker, which likely has a rice cooking function. If you’re really worried about your rice-to-liquid ratio, Kitchenaid’s Grain and Rice Cooker has an integrated scale that weighs the amount of grain you’re using and taps the appropriate amount of water from its tank.
No matter what happens, do not consume undercooked rice. In addition to having a poor taste and texture, undercooked rice can also cause foodborne illness. A study in the International Journal of Food Microbiology found that nearly 53% of raw rice samples from grocery stores contained bacteria associated with gastrointestinal symptoms. Cooking rice properly not only makes sure it tastes great; it also destroys the bacteria.
