Washing Rice

I came across this website – The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook while looking for some new recipes to cook for the family. While I didn’t find anything that I may want to cook for dinner, an entry on rice washing certainly brought back memories of my own lesson in washing rice. The age old process of washing rice and measuring the right amount of water seems to be the same no matter where in Asia you are from :)

My grand aunty taught me how to wash rice many years ago where there was no such thing as a standard cup or markings in the pot to guide you with the amount of water to add into the rice cooker. In fact, some of us cooked rice without the rice cooker!

We had used a recycled condense milk tin as a scoop for the rice, which was kept in the cupboard under the sink. We were told to rinse the rice until all the water was clear. The “rice water” was not to be thrown away, but was used to water the plants in the garden. Once we had clear water, we had to measure the right amount…using our index finger. We place it straight into the rice, with the tip just touching the rice. The water should come up to the joint of the first digit of the finger. Wipe the bottom of the pot dry and put it into the rice cooker.

And I have used this method to cook rice ever since. I finally figured out how to use the scoop & markings in the rice cooker when I got married, and bought myself a “modern” rice cooker. Maybe I should teach my children how to cook rice the “traditional” way someday…