I've eaten rice all my life and was taught to wash rice before cooking it. I've seen and eaten the starchiness that happens when not washing it and the difference is very noticeable. Rice was very gooey and starchy when not washed, versus a nice firm and chewy rice you would get from a restaurant when you do wash. Also washing it can clean out any bugs or dirt. It just made sense imo
I used to never wash my rice, but did notice the rice sludge in the rice cooker so figured, why not, let's wash it, and no more sludge, go figure. I even bought one of those two piece rice washing bowls from amazon which makes it so much easier. I'm a rice washing convert. Also, rice cookers are the greatest invention since sliced bread.
The biggest benefit of a rice maker is that it takes care of itself. I pour in the ingredients and click to start. Then it’s just ready when the rest of the meal is, and I have to worry a lot less about timing that or about doing as many things at once.
Pressure cooker is better than a cheap rice cooker, but a higher end rice cooker is about the same. You can do more stuff with the pressure cooker though.
Here are my findings for both, which are interesting, if you're counting calories and on a diet:
Cooking for consistency, initial consistency of rice cooked in Instant Pot is better, but yields much less rice, Rice Cooker yields almost 25% more rice per oz of dry rice.
1280 calories for 2 cups of uncooked white rice + 4 cups of water. Rice Cooker White Rice recipe yields 48oz of white rice .
1280 calories for 2 cups of uncooked white rice + 2.25 cups of water. IP White Rice recipe yields 32oz of white rice.
Now, of course I used less water in the IP than I did in the rice cooker, but it's the consistency of the rice I was testing.
I've also found if I cook a big batch in the rice cooker, and it's gloopy, I freeze it in individual sized meal weights of 8 oz, and when it defrosts, I can break it up in the plastic bag with my fingers, put it in the microwave for 3 minutes at 50% and it's perfect.
Mine uses 1.5 c water per cup of rice and takes 15-20 min with an Oster $20 unit. U telling me a pressure cooker is faster, and uses less water than that?
My understanding has always been that the fortified grains have been treated so because they stripped out the nutrients earlier, like with bleached flour. I don't buy these products but I very well could be misinformed.
Interesting. Though anybody literate in the scientific method knows that one study doesn't mean much. Whether it's placebo or not, I notice a difference in the finished product when I wash rice, so I will continue to do so.
This can't be right. They must have something off with their method.
You can even see murky, starchy white water drain out of the bowl the first couple of times you rinse and stir the uncooked rice. If that's not starch then what is it? The water will come out visibly cleaner with each round of rinsing and stirring.
Sure it could be placebo but I definitely feel that I can tell the difference between unwashed and washed rice.
Argument goes that the easily removed starch is all very short chain polymers, where the stickyness is more due to medium chain and highly branched molecules. I would honestly not be surprised if some of the cloudy water was also talc or other inorganic anti-clumping agents.
The type of rice you're cooking is also very important.
Yeah, the study said it has no effect on the stickiness of the rice.
Which is bizarre, because I've...seen it. Like repeatedly. And it's not a subtle difference. When I am lazy and don't wash my rice, it comes out MUCH gooier. It's not terrible but it's significantly different than when I wash it well.
Is this going to make me buy a second rice cooker to compare side by side? Ugh.
But if you read the article you'd have seen that prewashing to remove starch makes no difference. That's literally the point of this article.
"Culinary experts claim pre-washing rice reduces the amount of starch coming from the rice grains. ... Contrary to what chefs will tell you, this study showed the washing process had no effect on the stickiness (or hardness) of the rice."
And traditionally it was washed for cleanliness. The new wash to remove starch is a modern concept some people clearly started to say to sound smart with no evidence or science and it took off.
Read the article
This was the question in the article. They did a test of unwashed, washed 3 times, and washed 10 times, then compared the rice. The scientists found no difference between the samples. They further speculate that the stickyness level of the rice has to do with the starches that leech from inside the rice.
The article goes on to talk about how, depending on how (and where) the rice is processed, you may want to rinse rice to remove bits of husk, dust, pebbles, and possibly arsenic or microplastics.
Now, having said all of that, take the results of the study with a grain of salt. Washing 3 times isn't going to do much of anything, and 10 times doesn't actually tell us that they washed the rice properly. As soon as the starch is wet, it's sticky. You really have to rinse and agitate the rice, and wash until the water runs clear. Maybe that also leeches some of the more available starch from inside the rice, but the difference is noticeable to anyone who cooks rice on a regular basis. So I'm not going to question the suggested mechanism of action, but I know how to make rice that is and isn't sticky.
Only if you're concerned about removing dust, insects, little stones, bits of husk left from the rice hulling process, arsenic, and 20-40% of microplastics. The amount of those things is influenced by the region in which it's produced. Stickiness reduction from washing is nominal due to there being two different types of starch. The kind on the surface is different than the variety inside the grain, which is what affects the stickiness.
I've never bothered rinsing, but probably will now because of microplastics and arsenic. I've never seen impurities like what are listed, but I only buy rice produced in California.
As a cook with an Asian wife I say: don‘t wash it for Italian risotto and other creamy stuff, but do so for everything else. If it could be dirty rice, rinse it once.