lumps instead of two or three grains at a time.

Have a rice-cooking marathon to get thoroughly familiar with the technique. Get a pound

or two ( a kilo) of rice and play hooky from work for a couple of hours. Start with the recipe

here, then vary your technique to suit your taste until you judge the finished product perfect for

your taste and your purposes. Rice cooking varies slightly depending on your water, variety of

rice, humidity (i.e. how much moisture rice grains retain) and how hot your lowest burner setting

is. And some people like rice slightly al dente, others soft. Keep cooking batches of rice until

you have exactly the way you like it, noting for each batch the amount of water you used and

cooking time. It is a very cheap lesson, since rice is so inexpensive, and it only takes a few hours.

Feed your dog or cat any poor results and tell them that all Asian pets live mainly on rice. They

don't know the difference between good and bad rice and it is good for them (many canned cat

and dog food filler is rice).

Each cookbook's rice cooking technique is different. One variable, the amount of water to

use so the rice absorbs the last drop at the end of the cooking period, changes with the age of the

rice. Younger rice has a higher moisture content, so use slightly less water. But virtually all rice

we buy has passed the young-rice stage.

The large variety of cooking techniques probably originated in Asia. There are many

Asian rice-eating nations, and each culture prefers a different end result. Many people in parts of

Asia prefer a long-grain, fluffy, dry rice. But even these people don't agree on their cooking

techniques. In Pakistan, India, Burma and Sri Lanka they cook rice with salt. In Malaysia,

Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam they cook it without salt. Going further east, Cambodia, Korea,

China and Japan prefer a medium or short-grain variety that cooks up fluffy but moist with the

grains sticking together. They add no salt to the water. In Laos, they eat glutinous rice as the

everyday staple, not just in sweet preparations.

In Western cookbooks, the recommended cooking time for white rice varies from 15 to

30 minutes. Your guess is as good as anyone's why this broad range.

Another area of complete disagreement is whether to rinse the rice before cooking.

Asians often do this simply because their rice is not pre-cleaned. With better processing

techniques clean rice is now available more readily in Asia. Rice we buy in the U.S. is always

clean and you save a step by not rinsing it before cooking.

Another argument for pre-rinsers is to remove any surface starch that would make the

cooked rice sticky. Rinsing advocates swear that rinsing until the water runs clear (starch in the

rinsing water turns it milky) gives the fluffiest, driest, least sticky grains possible. Non-rinsers

argue that rinsing washes away most of the nutrients, particularly the three B vitamins.

Nutritional researchers agree. Laboratory experiments confirmed that much of the valuable

vitamins end up in the rinse water with extensive rinsing. So do you want vitamin-rich rice or

non-sticky rice?

To settle the controversy, I cooked identical rice in identical pots, one after a thorough

rinse and one straight from the bin. I found no perceivable difference in stickiness or in any other

culinary properties between the two pots of cooked rice. My recommendation—don't rinse the

vitamins away and save an unnecessary step.

There are three different ways to cook rice in your kitchen (not including the rice cooker).

One way is to cook it like pasta, in plenty of boiling salted water. When it is cooked, pour water

and rice into a colander, drain well and serve. This is not the easiest, and much of the nutrients in

the rice end up in the cooking water. But the method is foolproof.

Then you can cook rice in the oven. Combine rice, measured water and salt, and bake,

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