Sometimes it’s the simplest foods, cooked in the simplest ways that are the best. Over the years I’ve enjoyed cooking oriental-style food (I won’t try to claim to being able to cook “Chinese” or “Japanese” food just oriental-style food in a wok).
Way back when, my first wok was a free-standing electric one and it was pretty good except that it never generated the kind of high heat that works best with oriental cooking in a wok. And I’ve long been of the opinion that if I could only have one utensil for cooking it would have to be a wok because it’s the most versatile.
But anyway, that first red enameled wok came with a cookbook, “Madame Wong’s Long-Life Chinese Cookbook” which has been my resource guide for decades. This cookbook contains an incredibly easy and foolproof recipe for basic steamed rice that I have been using since the mid 1970’s. No need for “Minute Rice” or “Uncle Ben’s” or whatever. Just use plain old long grain rice that you get in a bag at the grocery store.
Sorry about the picture. This is all that was left after we gobbled up all the Swai Vera Cruz and you can see where we "double dipped " the serving spoon.
You don’t need a rice steamer. All you need is a simple 2 quart sauce pan with a lid and we’ve all got at least one of those don’t we? One of the things I’ve always liked about this recipe is I’ll do all my prep work for the oriental meal I’m going to cook and then prep my rice which takes maybe 2 minutes. I’ll put it on the stove and when it’s ready to be covered then I start up my burner to heat the wok. When the food is ready in the wok, the rice is done.
So here’s the simple recipe:
Recipe: Steamed Rice
Summary: You don’t need a rice cooker. Here’s Madame Wong’s Steamed Rice recipe that I’ve been using for 35 years.
Ingredients
- 2 cups long grained rice
- Water
Instructions
- Put the rice in the pan and then rinse it 4 or 5 times with cold water.
- Then cover the rinsed rice with water—dip your finger into the water. The water should come up to your first knuckle when the tip of your finger just barely touches the rice.
- Put the pan of rice on the stove, burner turned to medium high. Let it come to a boil and let almost all of the water boil off—I wait until there’s just bubbles popping out of the “craters” in the rice.
- Turn the burner all the way down as low as it will go. Cover the pot and let it sit for 20 minutes on that burner. It’s that easy.
Preparation time: 3 minute(s)
Cooking time: 25 minute(s)
Number of servings (yield): 4
Culinary tradition: Chinese
My rating 5 stars: ★★★★★ 1 review(s)
Now if you’re going to be making fried rice, cook this pot of rice either the evening before or in the morning because you want “left over” rice for fried rice. Trust me on this one–you NEVER want fresh cooked rice for fried rice.
But for any meal in which you want rice as a side, this is a terrific and simple recipe to use.
The Cheap Bastid Test: You’ll use no more than $.50 worth of rice for this and it will serve 4. So that means that it’s 12 ½ cents per serving.
That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!
