Rice stands as a kitchen essential celebrated for its adaptability, complementing everything from poultry, beef and seafood to curries and stir-fries perfectly. Yet despite its flexible character, achieving perfectly cooked rice can prove quite tricky.
Numerous home chefs falter during rice preparation, frequently forgetting to wash the grains or getting the water-to-rice proportions wrong, leading to undercooked, mushy, or excessively parched rice. Even when you sidestep these typical pitfalls, you may still end up with a rather bland accompaniment. However, there’s no need to worry, as one straightforward adjustment during cooking will transform your rice into something far more flavoursome.
On culinary website The Kitchn, food expert Emma Christensen revealed her professional secrets for transforming “a boring pot of rice taste amazing”.
Her primary recommendation for ensuring “keep rice flavourful” involves a straightforward yet powerful method: toasting the grains.
She said: “Toasting the dry rice grains in a little butter or olive oil before adding the water brings out their flavour and adds a fantastic nutty note in the finished dish.”
She suggested trying this approach with brown rice or other wholegrains such as barley.
Emma’s follow-up suggestion involves incorporating chicken or vegetable stock into your rice cooking pan, whether that’s leftover homemade stock or simply a stock cube.
She revealed: “I sometimes find that using 100% chicken broth can make the rice feel gummy or overly-starchy.
“I usually go for a 50/50 mix of broth and water. This adds a layer of flavour and richness without going overboard.”
The specialist advised seasoning the rice with components from your main dish, ensuring consistent flavours throughout the entire meal.
She encouraged home chefs to use whole spices for delicate hints and ground versions for more intense flavours.
She also disclosed that she “almost always” incorporates a bay leaf into her cooking, whatever she might be making.