[recipe] Basic white rice - with pressure cooker - shiro gohan

After a little 'break, here I am again.

By looking the date of the last post, I realized that have already been more than three weeks.

Well, let's start from an essential thing ... white rice ... 

Not that Italian white risotto (Riso in Bianco) with olive oil, butter, cheese, etc. even if it's very tasty and I like it, but what I want to write about today is the "Far East" (or Chinese / Korean / Japanese) style white rice, for which you need only two ingredients: rice and water, nothing else.

Thanks to this simplicity, the rice cooked in this way can be served in so many ways: as side dish, sushi, onigiri, donburi bowls, bento, pokè ...

Although it is often called "steamed rice", actually the method of cooking is not steamed but ... well, I don't know the right word to represent this method. However, it is easier to do than to say.

The only problem could be the equipment: pressure cooker.

Mine is Lagostina Brava 6 liter of capacity. ← This one here. I tried to find the same one in Amazon.com but they've got other models not the Brava. I bought it about 15 years ago and I use it very often: for stew, for minestrone, for vegetables and also for the white rice. The pressure that this cooker produces is of 55kPa. It is not very high. Indeed, it is quite low compared to other products. However, it is this low pressure that is important for this recipe. It makes the rice sweet and soft and at the same time keeps the shape of the grains. So if your cooker is with adjustable pressure, set it at the low pressure mode, otherwise at the end of cooking when you open the lid you will find all the grains crushed and sticking together.

BASIC SIMPLE WHITE RICE

- cooked with pressure cooker -

Total time: 75 minutes

     Preparation: 50 minutes
     Cooking: 10 minutes
     Resting: 15 minutes

Ingredients for 4-6 servings

400 g of Short grain rice

400 g (400 ml) of Water

 
If you measure the ingredients with glasses, the proportion is 0.9 glass of water for every glass as you see in the picture.

Method

1. Put the rice in a large colander and rinse it with running water

2. Drain the rice in the colander and leave them for 10 minutes (no more than 15 minutes anyway otherwise the surface of the rice will be dried too much)

2. Put the rice and water in a pressure cooker and leave them for at least 30 minutes

3. Close the lid of the cooker and heat it on medium/high heat until it begins to whistle

When whistle lower the heat to the minimum and continue to cook for 8 minutes*

*I usually use a heat diffuser for this step (remember to preheat it)

4. After 8 minutes, remove the cooker from the heat and wait 10 minutes before opening the lid to finish cooking the rice

DO NOT OPEN THE COOKER EVER at this stage, otherwise the rice comes out undercooked.

5. After 10 minutes, open the cooker

and with a wooden or silicone spatula stir the rice gently (bottom to up, a side to another), being careful not to break or crush the rice grains

6. Close the cooker again and wait 5 more minutes

7. Here it's ready!

Today I served it with daikon and pork belly teriyaki, marinated mushrooms and green beans with sesame seeds.

Another nice thing is that this rice can be stored in the freezer.

Want to know how? 

Go → ☆ How to freeze cooked white rice  . 

Go to OishiGnam Recipes List

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