I grew up in Asia so properly cooked, fluffy, steamed rice was always a given. Restaurants made it in industrial rice cookers but, at home, my mom just made it in a pan on top of the stove - a tradition which I continued after moving into my own apartment. When Stubbie and I got married, I could not understand his insistence that we put a rice cooker on our registry list. We do eat a lot of Asian white rice - despite its documented lack of health benefits - but I really could not see that we needed modern technology in order to cook it.
We eventually did get the rice cooker but I continued to feel that it was an unnecessary piece of kitchen equipment: the rice cooker only did one thing and took up valuable counter space. It was also a very annoying item because, being from Japan (and the Japanese love cute), the damn thing whistled the entirety of Yankee Doodle Dandy when the rice was ready. Try as I might, I could not turn that function off. The day the machine finally died, I put my foot down and refused to replace it. Stubbie therefore came up with a new method for getting perfect Japanese restaurant level rice at home (and I have since perfected it in the recipe below).
Recipe
Serves 4 with small appetites or 2 with large appetites plus enough left over to make onigirazu for lunch
1 cup rice (I tend to use whatever Kohoku Rose California rice my grocery store has in its ethnic section)
1 1/2 cups water (plus a bit retained during rinsing - more below)
Preheat your oven to 350.
Measure your rice into an oven friendly pot with cover (I use a heavy Le Creuset Dutch oven).
Rinse under cold running water and drain. Do this a few times until the water runs clear. I usually just use my hand as both a stirrer and a strainer and pour off as much water as I can each time. The rice will still be damp at the end of the rinsing process but you don't want to leave too much excess water in the bottom of the pot or the recipe will not work. Basically you will have (give or take a teaspoon) an extra tablespoon of water in the pan that did not drain off.
Add 1 1/2 cups water to the pot. Cover, place in oven and cook for 22 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let the rice steam, cover on, for 7 minutes.
Remove the cover and fluff with the Japanese rice paddle that you own if you are a food snob/lived in Japan/eat a lot of Asian rice or with a fork.
Perfect rice every time.
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