Make Perfect Rice Every Time With Sohla | Cooking 101

Get Sohla’s recipe for Buttered Pilaf: https://nyti.ms/42qVn6V

If you’ve ever burned rice (without meaning to), this one’s for you. Cooking 101 is a new series where Sohla El-Waylly, author of “Start Here,” walks you through techniques and tips for becoming a better, more informed cook. This episode is — you guessed it — all about rice. Long-grain, medium-grain, short-grain, parboiled, enriched, white, brown, pearled … so much rice, so little time. Watch to learn what it all means, including a demo of Sohla’s recipe for buttered pilaf.

Stovetop Rice: https://nyti.ms/3OqMR1S
Whatever You’ve Got Fried Rice: https://nyti.ms/3HKEcnp

——————————————

VISIT NYT COOKING: https://cooking.nytimes.com/

SUBSCRIBE to NYT COOKING: https://nyti.ms/3FfKmfb
A paid subscription gets you full access to our recipes, daily inspiration and a digital Recipe Box.

YOUTUBE: https://bit.ly/2MrEFxh

INSTAGRAM: http://bit.ly/2DqJMuD
FACEBOOK: http://bit.ly/2MrTjEC
TWITTER: http://bit.ly/2RZB6ng
PINTEREST: http://bit.ly/2W44xng

About NYT Cooking:
All the food that’s fit to eat (yes, it’s an official New York Times production).

Welcome back in today’s episode we’re going to talk about rice wow oh I’m Sola El we we have to do that part hi I’m Sola El and today I’m at the New York Times cooking studio and we’re going to talk all about rice we’re just

Going to do a few basic things today so you can just like get a good foothold into the rice world and it’s also another essential ingredient that when you know how to cook rice you can make any meal breakfast lunch or Dinner there’s a lot of different kinds of rice there are long grain Rices medium grain Rices and short grain Rices long grain Rices are typically more like fluffy the shorter the grain often times it’s more sticky that’s not like a hard and fast rule in general that’s usually

The way it goes and then besides that you’ll find brown rice and white rice brown rice is the whole grain it’s fully intact so it’s going to have the germ and the and with white rice The Germ and the BR are removed and then there are

Other things to look for on your rice parboiled that means that the rice has been par cooked and dried what that does is it kind of enhances some nutrients increases digestibility and it makes the cooking a bit more foolproof when rice is cooked and then dried it goes through

A process called starch retrogradation which makes the starch molecules a bit more sturdy and strong so you have fluffy your grains that’s what Uncle Ben’s is it’s a parboiled rice that’s almost impossible to make incorrectly then you can also find enriched rice this is similar to enriched flour where

Basically it means that there are some added vitamins and minerals the price range on Rice can vary greatly and unfortunately with rice you get what you pay for so high quality rice costs more but it is a grain so it is still relatively cheap compared to other

Ingredients if you’re a big rice fan I say go for it it last forever and there is quite a difference between a an inexpensive rice and a slightly more expensive rice and we’re just talking about a couple dollars a pound if you eat a lot of white rice you can actually

Totally buy it in bulk white rice lasts almost forever as long as you keep it in a cool dry Place brown rice doesn’t last that long because it’s got the germ intact it has these oils that will quickly go rancid that’s actually the reason why rice was initially pearled

Which is the process of removing the husk and The Germ increases shelf life to practice ially forever if you got room get a big old bag of rice you’ll always have rice when I think about the pitfalls that might come along with cooking rice a lot of it comes down to dness

Overcooked or undercooked rice there are a few key steps that will help you avoid that and then even if you do mess up your rice I’m going to show you what to do with that rice so no rice will ever go to waste growing up rice was very

Important in my culture and we were taught that you don’t even waste one grain of rice so today I’m going to teach you how to like never waste your rice we’re going to do some fun stuff with it we’re going to pick all of this up this bag especially is coming home

With me we’re using white rice today and the great thing about white rice is that it Cooks pretty quickly so we’re going to start by steaming some rice this method most of the time is referred to as steaming but we’re not actually steaming it the technical term for this

Method is the absorption method because all of the liquid we’re adding to the rice is going to be fully absorbed this method will work with any kind of white rice um the only thing is depending on the length of the grain the ratio of water will change as a general rule of

Thumb shorter grains of rice do better with one to one so one part rice one part water medium grains do better with one part rice to one and a half part Waters and then long grain rice like Basmati does better with two to one that’s a good place to start and then

Tweak maybe you like your rice a little bit firmer or a little bit softer so I like to write my personal favorite ratio on the package to go back to and then if I buy that Rice again I’ll write it down you can like curate your rice cooking

To your personal specifications and I think that’s really fun so for steamed rice simple process first we’re going to rinse our rice then I like to soak it this is optional but I’ll discuss the details later and then we’re going to bring it up to a boil cover it and cook

It on low little fluff at the end and a rest simple steps but let’s go through the details so you can like perfect it rice cookers I know a lot of folks swear by one I think that they’re wonderful I personally don’t have one because I live

In New York and not only do I have limited counter space but I have like one outlet for the entire apartment this will work for a rice cooker too you just don’t have to manage the heat but you rinse the rice and soak the rice and add

The water in exactly the same way and then you just press a button so if you have a rice cooker oh good for you I’m like jealous if you don’t have a rice cooker and you’re making it in a pot any pot will work the main thing that

Matters here is you have a tight fitting lid if you don’t have a tight fitting lid you can always kind of like work your way around it by first wrapping wrapping the top with a little bit of foil popping a lid on top my favorite

Pot to cook rice at at home is a Little Dutch oven that has a really tight fitting lid nothing comes out of there but that’s really all you need okay so to rinse the rice I like to use a big bowl cuz you want to get in there and

Swish gently you don’t want to break the grains you want to swish to help get every grain moistened and then I’m going to tip it out and we’re going to repeat when you rinse the rice you remove a lot of those exterior scuffed up starches so

When you cook your rice it doesn’t get all clumpy and you don’t have to worry about getting all the water out this point because we’re going to just keep rinsing and then it’s going to get a soak growing up I was always told minimum of three times I don’t know why

Three is the lucky number but I was always told minimum of three times and you want to rinse until the water runs like mostly clear it’s never going to get totally clear but you just want it to be clear enough that when you stick

Your hand in there you can see it I like to soak my rice in the cool water for about 15 minutes up to 2 hours this is not not a required step um especially for medium and short grain Rices and the soaking step is especially essential for longer grain Rices because it prevents

The grain from breaking Cooks much more evenly and you end up with like a longer more like beautiful perfect grain of Basmati doing the little soak makes a huge difference and makes your rice a little bit more foolproof my rice is soaked and I’m going to drain it once

You have soaked it you want to be a little more gentle with it cuz it’s more likely to break at this point so here I’ve got my two cups of jasmine rice to that I’m going to add water adding salt is optional so if you’re going to have your rice with something really

Flavorful like a curry I don’t season my rice there’s going to be enough flavor coming from everything you’re going to serve it with but if I’m going to just have my rice with like an egg I would season it I grew up with rice that would

Never had salt in it because we had it with such flavorful things so I’m not going to Salt it and we’re going to start by bringing this up to a boil over medium high heat just give it like an occasional stir as it comes up to boil

Just to make sure it Heats evenly and I like to do this bit covered so we can lose as little water as possible so once we bring it up to a boil I’m going to turn it down to the lowest setting and at that point you do not stir you do not

Peek you set a timer and you trust that it’s doing its thing if you get in there in the middle of cooking and pop off the lid you’re going to lose too much Steam and it’s not going to cook right and then once we open it up we’re going to

Look for some dness cues to determine what to do next we’re going to go through some rice trouble shooting so I set a timer for 15 minutes we are 20 seconds away I have not peaked so let’s check it out wow we’re going to get in with the fork

Fluff it up and you want to make sure that your grains are tender and that there’s no water left at the bottom of the pot so if you get in there to fluff and you notice that you have a little water left at the bottom of the pot and

Your rice is still not tender just cover it back up put it on low heat and let it cook for another 5 minutes and check it again if you notice that there’s some water at the bottom of the pot and the grains are cooked through just uncover

It and let it cook on low for 5 minutes to drive off that excess moisture and let’s say you uncover it it’s dry and it’s undercooked just grab like a back of a wooden spoon and make a little hole right in the middle and pour in about it

Like a tablespoon of warm water you don’t need much cover it up and let it cook on low heat for 5 minutes check it again we just need it to get really nice and steamy often times your rice is just like a little bit off and you can take

It the rest of the way with some adjustments but if it’s perfect and tender and you’ve got no liquid at the bottom just cover it and let it rest the resting phase is really important when you let it rest the grains will firm up become distinct and any little bit of

Excess moisture will be absorbed okay so next we’re going to talk about making a peeloff A peeloff can be many things and it’s in a lot of different cultures often with different names peof is like the French word but anyone who has rice has their version of

Peeloff so a peeloff essentially at its core it means that you’re going to take grains toast them in some fat and then you add a liquid and cook it peel offs can be made with any grain just like with the steaming absorption method this is a great place to like really simply

Level up the flavor by changing out what you cook it in so I’m going to cook this in water but you can do broth or Dashi or any kind of stock do a mix of like water and tomato pada or maybe water and coconut milk this is just like the most

Basic the most essential peel off but then you can get very creative with it and change it up however you want First Step I’m just going to toast the grains in some butter the rice I’ve already rinsed and soaked so we’re starting out exactly the same way as we do with

Steamed rice so this is actually a celus which means that it’s parboiled the great thing with the Cella busman is it can handle a longer cook time so this is a great place to start your peel off Journey because it is a very forgiving rice now when you first add your rice

It’s going to sound like very simy very like wet and you want to cook it until it starts to sound more sizzly so you know that you’ve driven off a lot of that excess moisture and we’re getting like a nice good toast on it so be pretty gentle with your tossing but keep

It moving pretty frequently so that every grain of rice can have some time in that fat so I’m over medium heat I’m just going to keep stirring and tossing and we’re listening to the sizzling and we’re also going for smell so you want to go until it like smells slightly more

Nutty almost like a popcorn Vibe it’s going to make it taste more aromatic much more flavorful and then most importantly it deactivates a lot of those surface starches which prevent it from getting too clumpy so we end up with like a really fluffy peel off at

The end so this parching step this is really what makes a peel off of peel off one way that I love to do this at home is I’ll cook it with bone broth instead of water and then it just like bumps up the nutrition and then you just like

While it’s resting there’s still a lot of heat coming out and I’ll just pile on some like quick cooking vegetable like pile on some spinach cover it it’ll Wilt from that heat and that’s all you need that’s dinner okay so let’s just listen to it for a

Second the sound is kind of sharp and like pointy you know what I mean and that’s how you know that the moisture has cooked off and we’re done with our parching okay so now I’m going to add my water exactly like when you steam rice

We’re going to bring it up to a boil turn it down to Low cover and let it do its thing so busatti rice longer grain higher volume of water needs a bit more salt peeloff unlike steamed rice I do always salt okay so we’ll bring that up

To a boil so the peel off cooking time I like to take it 18 minutes I know that’s very specific instead of the 15 a lot of people give you a range but I think you should like figure out a timing that works for your stove top and go with it

Because when you open and fuss it kind of makes it worse so I think it needs a little bit more time because we’ve toasted it so the grains are a little bit more like sturdy they need a little bit more time to cook through we’re

Going to bring it up to a vigorous boil I’m going to stir it to make sure that it’s boiling all the way through cover knock it back too low and it’s going to steam for 18 minutes we’re going to uncover look for those same dness cues

As the steamed rice is there any liquid at the bottom has the grain cooked through if everything looks good cover and let it rest for like 15 minutes you can even let it rest for like an hour so this is a great thing to make while

You’re making other stuff rice is a lot easier than pasta because pasta doesn’t wait for you pasta Waits for No One rice can wait for you and it’s been resting now for about 15 minutes and now we can see we have our really nice fluffy buttery rice look at it glisten what’s

Great is I can like really smell the butter and that’s all that’s in here so imagine if you threw in like a little sprig of time wo if you added a little turmeric at the beginning then you get like a a beautiful yellow rice you could maybe sauté some butter and garlic in

Your fat and then instead of water use broth whoo that’s like level two peel off you want to take it a little bit crazier maybe add some like quick cooking vegetables or protein like throw in some shrimp or some some peas that’s level three peel off and then you know

You want to go even further cook it with like marinated lamb and a a bunch of spices and that’s like super fancy peel off so play around with this but this is a good place to start so now we’re going to make some fried rice this is the perfect thing to

Do when you have some leftover rice hanging out in the fridge in fact it’s better when your rice is made the day before cuz when it goes into the fridge it kind of like dries out a little bit so it’s going to have a perfect texture

For your fried rice so there are so many different fried Rices of course everyone knows the China but even there there’s so many different fried Rices there’s fried rice where I’m from Bangladesh where we do it with like turmeric and shallots there’s fried rice in Latin America everywhere there’s rice there’s

Fried rice so this is not like the ultimate fried rice I’m just going to give you a rough guide on how to make a fried rice with whatever you got in your fridge cuz this is the perfect thing to make when you just have nothing to eat

That’s what we’re here to do I want to teach you how to make something with what you’ve got so the basic things that you need for your fried rice is you’re going to need your cooked leftover rice about a cup a person is a good starting point then you’re going to want some

Aromatics we’re going classic here so I’ve got ginger garlic scallion we’re going to use some leftover diced Deli pastrami as our protein but use any kind of meat you’ve got frozen shrimp or leftover rotisserie chicken or if you want to do little crumbled tofu or Satan

Get creative we’re also going to add an egg cuz I love an egg in my rice some flavors and some vegetables having some frozen vegetables in your freezer will save you I always keep some mixed vegetables some peas and some kale always in my freezer and you will you

Will use it it’s a great way to like sneak in some veggies when you are just time to throw a meal together so traditionally a lot of people make fried rice in a walk my favorite thing to do is make fried rice in a large well seasoned cast iron skillet it’s going to

Get really hot cook really quickly and give you that like essential flavor of fried rice which really does come from cooking it hot and fast so the reason why fried rice is so good with leftover rice is when you put rice in the fridge it goes through this process called starch

Retrogradation and basically what happens is when you cook any starch and then chill it the carbohydrate strands in it actually like stiffen up they get stronger it’s not just get becoming stale or dry there’s actually something changing chemically to the rice all you need to know is cold leftover rice mix

Good fried rice cooked rice does go bad pretty quickly so warm rice should be stored in the fridge as quickly as possible if you leave it out for more than 2 hours there’s a danger of it developing that not so good bacteria we’re going to start by adding some

Neutral oil this is going to get quite hot so you don’t want to do this with butter or olive oil so we’re using an avocado oil here you need to be generous with the fat so the first thing I’m going to do is cook my protein it’s

Already cooked so we’re just looking to Brown it get a little color a little Char there isn’t really a general ratio of stuff to Rice you just kind of go with what your heart tells you the other thing that’s important when you’re making fried rice is everything happens

Pretty quickly so you need to make sure you got all of your me on past before you get going ooh a great fantastic protein for fried rice spam classic I also love hot dog fried rice I almost wanted to do this with hot dog but I didn’t know if that was like

Not cool enough for you guys but like you Dice up some hot dogs and get it really crispy wow okay so we got some nice frizzly action on our pastrami I’m going to scoop this out and then we’re going to go in with our aromatics the best thing about cooking your protein first

Is we’ve developed a little bit of really flavorful fond at the bottom of the pan we want to make sure that that does not burn I’m going to add a bit more oil important thing with fried rice is you do not want your Skillet to get dry

And then we’re going right in with our scallions and our garlic and ginger this is going to go pretty quickly so this just needs a little bit of heat to kind of bring out the flavors we don’t want to develop too much color here and once

We add our veggies it’s going to cool down the pan so everything smells really nice and aromatic and my scallions have nicely wilted so now I’m going to add a whole bag of frozen vegetables and it’s going to immediately cool down the pan keep everything from burning and at this

Point I’m going to lightly season with salt even though we’re going to finish with soy you still want to season in layers and make sure everything gets a little hit of salt and from this moisture from the veggies I’m going to scrape up that fond so fond is when

You’re cooking something and you develop like a little brown crust at the bottom of the pan from the cooking that’s like the most flavorful thing it’s like the essence of flavor you don’t want it to go to waste and instead you want to figure out ways to like scrape it up and

Reincorporate it back into your dish so here the moisture from the veggies to help us scrape up that delicious Fawn so it ends up all in our fried rice I think it’s important to make sure that you give it a second for all the moisture to cook out we’re not just defrosting it

Right now when you listen to it it sounds really wet we’re going to cook it until that wet sound switches to like sizzling just like when we were parching our rice so while my veggies continue cooking here I’ve got a couple of eggs I’ve already beaten with a big pinch of

Salt as you learned in the last episode we always salt our eggs in advance yes My Pan is feeling a little dry again so we need a little more fat don’t be skimpy because there’s a lot of rice and we need to make sure all the rice gets

Nicely coated in that fat wait do you hear it doesn’t it start sounds more pointy now right so now we’re going to add our eggs make a little Nest so it doesn’t spill all over here and we’ll pour our eggs right in the middle at this point when I’ve got my

Veggies and my mixins and I’m looking at my pastrami that’s when I really decide how much rice I’m going to add so I’m I don’t think I’m going to add actually all of that I think it might be a little bit too much always like hold back cuz

The last thing you want is for you to take this time to make this really flavorful base only to like put way too much rice and totally dilute the whole thing so rice going in and we’re going to add our pami let’s mix this up when

You’re cooking a lot at home you don’t want to have to be looking at a recipe and measuring stuff all the time you kind of want to like go with your instincts and like follow your heart you know so a lot of times that means just like being patient looking at something

Thinking about it before you like dump it all in there like right here for me this is the right amount of rice and that means I left a little bit behind and that’s okay that’s going to be a snack later everything’s really nicely mixed together and we’re going to do our final

Seasoning of a little bit of soy and sesame oil sesame oil is something that you want to always add at the end so you don’t lose those like really nutty aromatics and we’ve already seasoned a lot of this with salt and the pastrami has a lot of flavor so you don’t need a

Ton going to get in there and give it a taste see if it needs anything else when you’re tasting don’t taste it when it’s like ripping hot cuz you’re not going to get like a very good idea of how something tastes so like cool it down to the temp

That you would actually eat it and remember you don’t have to make this fried rice I just hope you got some tips to make your own fried rice okay so we went over some basic techniques but let’s say you you made a pot of rice and it’s not perfect it’s

Not the end of the world you can salvage it by making a porridge so I’m going to show you how to take some rice that maybe is like overcooked mushy maybe maybe the grains are sticking together a little bit too much whatever it is you

Don’t want to eat it as it is we’re going to make a porridge so here I’ve got a pot of sushi rice it got a little too wet it got a little too sticky we’re going to split it up into three and I’m going to show you three really simple

Porridges I grew up with something called kti which was rice that was Sim with a little bit of lentils so we’re going to make a variation on that but a lot of places you have kanji which is like a very simple rice porridge rice that’s cooked until it’s really nice and

Tender and then it’s topped with a few simple things and we’re going to do like an Italian Vibe one with broo and some pecino and peas so it’s kind of like a lazy person’s risotto and the best thing about porridge is that it really stretches your rice so we’re going to

Take this little pot of rice and we’re going to turn it into three big pots of porridge and it’s almost like magic how you can serve so many people with such a small amount of rice and I think that’s why porridge is so important in so many

Different regions that eat rice my first one is going to be like a very simple kanji kanji is quite Bland cuz it’s meant to be kind of like a soothing comfort food so we’re just going to cook this with water you can totally eyeball this so if you’re cooking this and it

Looks a little bit too thick add more water if you’re cooking this and it feels a little thin just keep simmering cuz you can’t overcook it so the second one is kind of loosely based off of something I grew up having called gulut so to this I’m going to add water and

Some rinsed red lentils and that’s going to simmer all together now our final rice porridge I’m going to simmer this up with a little bit of bone broth now we’re going to simmer all of these depending on how cooked your rice was to start with and what kind of grain

You started with it’s going to vary in time but anywhere from like half an hour to an hour Stir It occasionally cuz it could Scorch you want want it to simmer kind of vigorously to really break up the rice and then take a look and see what

Texture you want you know like there’s some people who like thin oatmeal and some people like thick oatmeal it’s the same thing with the rice porridge so add more moisture or uncover and let it simmer and reduce depending on the texture you want for your final porridge okay so my porridges have been

Simmering away and you can see they’ve really transformed so you can see the rice has like fully broken down it’s really thick and creamy this is the one with lentils so those lentils added extra body and made it really nice and thick and this is a nice texture for me

But you know you do you if you want it thicker you continue cooking it down if you want it thinner adjust with water we’re going to add some salt season it up it’s always good to wait until the end to season because you don’t know exactly how much or how little liquid

You’re going to add so let’s give that a taste it needs quite a bit of salt because we took that rice that was already not seasoned and then added a whole bunch of liquid to it which was also not seasoned so you need to take a minute get the seasoning really nice cuz

That’s like the key to the flavor here so this is our plain rice with just water nothing going on here you can see it looks quite different from the rice with the lentils it’s a little bit less creamy and it has more of like a white Hue this is a good

Texture for me too and this one I’m actually going to keep totally blend cuz we’re going to top it with some very flavor ful toppings so I think that’s good the way it is and our final one so this is the rice that we simmered in

Some bone broth I did also have to add some water to get it to be the right consistency but it’s you can see it’s like really really creamy and soft and tender and this one is going to get a few extra finishing touches just going to use frozen peas I I think there’s

Absolutely nothing wrong with frozen peas it’s something we always have in our freezer and it really does often save the day sometimes this is the only vegetable in the house so a little peino how about some pepper and a little lemon sest so this is like it has like

Rotto Vibes but not at all not at all this is not at all risotto risotto the grains are like intact but like if you want the comforting creamy Italian rice Vibes this is like a really easy way to get it and save your rice that maybe wasn’t perfect to begin with and I’m

Going to taste this one after my cheese has a chance to like melt into it and incorporate because the cheese does bring a lot of salt so we don’t want to overseason you know whenever I’m adding a mix in like this I do wait to season cuz it’s going to adjust how much

Seasoning you need and this is feeling just a little thick for me so I’m going to add a little water you got to remember that this is on the stove and like piping hot so once it hits the plate it’s going to thicken up a little

Bit cuz it’s going to cool down a touch okay so I’m going to taste now and see how I am on salt even though there’s no salt in there it’s pretty flavorful cuz we used bone broth and peino but still need needs a good bit of salt and I’m going

To add some more pepper and I actually think I want to brighten this up a little and finish it with some of the lemon juice and then we’re going to Plate these up and add some fun Toppings so here I have from that one overcooked pot of rice three three distinct amazing delicious porridges this is not only a great way to use any leftover rice or overcooked rice or messed up rice it’s just a great recipe to have in your bank because it’s

So cheap and you can really use whatever you’ve got in your fridge to make it your own you know what to do with your leftover rice you know what to do with your messed up rice and you know what to do with your just rice and I’ll see you

Next time for more 101 cooking school I don’t know the title of the show H