Steamed rice

Fluffy buttered steamed rice — the quick, reliable side for sauces, curries and goulash.

Ingredients

• rice300 g
• water450 ml
• butter20 g
• salt1 tsp

Method

1. Rinse the rice. Tip the rice into a sieve and rinse under cold running water, moving it around with your hand until the water runs mostly clear — this washes off excess starch and helps the grains stay separate.
2. Bring water to boil. Pour 450 ml of cold water into a medium saucepan, add 1 tsp of salt and bring to a rolling boil over high heat.
3. Add rice and stir. Tip in the rinsed rice, stir once to stop it clumping, then let the water return to the boil.
4. Cover and simmer low. Drop the heat to its lowest setting, put a tight-fitting lid on the pan and cook for 15 minutes — resist lifting the lid, as the trapped steam does the work.
5. Rest off the heat. Take the pan off the heat and leave it, lid still on, for 5 minutes; the rice will finish cooking in its own steam and the bottom grains will stop catching.
6. Butter and fluff. Lift the lid, add the 20 g of butter and use a fork to gently fluff through the rice until the butter has melted and every grain is coated. Serve straight away alongside your sauce, curry or goulash.

Safety & hygiene Important

• Reheating cooked rice. Cooked rice left at room temperature can develop Bacillus cereus bacteria within a couple of hours. If you're not serving it immediately, cool leftovers quickly, refrigerate within one hour and reheat thoroughly to steaming hot all the way through — and never reheat rice more than once.