Rice is something I grew up eating nearly every night and it’s still a staple part of our nightly meals. Though we mix it up between white rice and yellow rice, white rice is super easy to make and requires little ingredients. My oldest daughter loves white rice, but hasn’t yet learned to love yellow rice, so I often make it for her. Though I know that white rice is easy to make, I also know that many people have a hard time cooking white rice. I often get asked, “How do you make rice?” and mostly get questions about how much water to add to the rice and how long to cook it. Even when using a rice cooker, it seems these questions remain for many.
My recipe for rice comes from my own mami, but I’ve adapted it for a rice cooker. I hope this white rice recipe helps many of you figure out how to cook white rice, plus trust me, it’s an easy and simple recipe. Here’s how you too can cook the perfect white rice in a rice cooker!
How to Cook the Perfect White Rice in a Rice Cooker
Ingredients
- 4 cups uncooked white rice
- 1 3/4 cups water
- 3 Tbsp vegetable cooking oil
- 1-2 Tbsp salt
Directions
- Pour the uncooked white rice into the pot of your rice cooker and rinse the rice. (If you’re not familiar with how to rinse or clean your rice, it just means that you run it under water a couple of times and pick out the dark grains, pebbles, etc.)
- Once you’re done rinsing the rice, be sure to drain out all the water used for rinsing.
- Add 1 3/4 cups fresh water, the cooking oil, and salt.
- Cover the pot and turn on your rice cooker.
- You do not have to stir the rice when making rice cooker rice, but I find that if I stir it just once mid-way through, it helps the rice fluff up more.
- Cook white rice for about 40 minutes total to be sure it’s not grainy or dry.
Do you often cook white rice?
All photos © Melanie Edwards/modernmami™
My rice burned. It’s not enough water on your recipe for 4 cups of water.
Oh no! I was certain I measured correctly to avoid having either dry rice or mushy rice, but I will double check this again next time I cook white rice in my rice cooker and update the recipe if necessary.
Mine didn’t burn, but it was still crunchy when it popped up to “warm” I added more water 2x and pushed it back down. Great flavor! My white rice is always so blah. Thanks for sharing.
Sometimes that can happen and you did exactly what I would do! Add a little more water and let it steam a little longer. I’m so glad you liked the flavor!
It doesn’t make any sense to use like 2-3 times less water than rice! It will be extremely crunchy and uncooked. The main reason for burned rice is the starch. The rice needs way higher temperature to burn, but starch doesn’t, so it just needs more thorough cleaning.
This recipe contains a good ratio of water to rice and makes rice that is not crunchy or uncooked, but rather fluffy, but not too moist or sticky. I know the preferences for white rice are cultural. In many Latino cultures – Puerto Rico included – we enjoy the crispy (not burned) rice at the bottom of the pot and have a special name for it, pegao. Fellow Latino cultures have other names for it.