Cooking rice using the rice cooker makes cooking rice easy and hassle free but there are times when struggle to remove the rice when it sticks to the bottom of the pot. When rice cooker is correctly used, rice sticking to the bottom of the rice cooker can be prevented. In today’s guide, we will teach you simple and effective ways on how to keep rice from sticking to the pot.
How To Keep Rice From Sticking To Pot
There are several reasons why rice sticking to the bottom of the pot and that includes lack of water, excess starch and or caused by overcooking. Effective ways to avoid rice sticking from happening is by adding more water, add tablespoon of oil, rinse the rice before cooking it and steaming the rice after it is cooked.
Causes why rice sticking to the bottom of the pot:
- Scratched bottom or worn off non stick coating: A non stick pan will allow the rice to be cooked without sticking into the pot. When coating is scratched and is already worn off, the rice will definitely stick to the bottom if the rice cooker is not properly used.
- Not enough water: During the boiling process, water will evaporate. When that happens the amount of water will not be enough to add moisture to make rice fluffy and full. When that happens, you will get a hard rice and could possibly stick to the bottom
Keep in mind that since there are different varieties of rice available, the type of rice have its own specific water to rice ratio and each has its own time of cooking as well. To cite an example, white rice do not require more water and has a lesser cooking time as compared to brown rice that needs more water and has a longer time. Another example in relation to water ratio is that short grain sushi rice has a different water ration compared to long grain basmati rice.
If after carefully observing and practicing the correct ratio of water when cooking rice but still the rice is still sticking to pot, then you can at this time check the bottom of the pot if the nonstick lining is not scratched and or the bottom is not damaged.
Rinse Rice before cooking
The very first thing that you need to do in order to prevent rice from sticking to the pot is to rinse the rice before cooking. Although this does only prevent the rice from sticking but is also considered to be the first step in the rice cooking process.
Washing the rice using cold water before cooking will release scratches from the grains and remove starch. You can do this step at least 3 times. Each time you rinse the rice, you will notice that the water has become clearer. You can either use a mesh strainer or a muslin cloth bag to rinse the rice.
Add a teaspoon of Oil
To make sure that rice will not accumulate or stick to the bottom of the pot, it needs to be properly greased. To do this, you can simply coat the sides of the pot as well as the bottom area of the rice cooker with oil. The most common oil to use is the vegetable oil, that helps lubricate the rice and in return the rice grains will not stick with each other. Aside from oil, you can also use butter to grease the rice cooker.
Add Extra water
After rinsing the rice in the rice cooker, make sure to add water with the recommended water ratio. As mentioned, the amount of water differs on the type of rice grains. Most often, each rice packaging contains cooking directions.
To avoid rice sticking to the inner pan , it is advisable to add extra water that will keep your rice fluffy.
If you ware wondering how much water to add, keep in mind that you can add at least 10% of water to the rice cooker.
Stir Rice in the Water
The next thing you need to do to prevent rice sticking to the pan is to stir rice in the water before it starts cooking. Using a wooden spoon, gently stir the rice. This is to make sure that each grain of rice is separated and each particles is not settled down to the bottom of the pan.
Once cooked, leave the rice to steam
When the cooking process of the rice is done is when the rice cooker shuts off. Allow the rice to steam inside the rice cooker for a few minutes (at least 5-10 minutes). This will ensure that the steam that is trapped and allows water to evaporate. Doing so will result to a more fluffier and dry cooked rice rather than a wet rice.
How to Remove rice sticking to the bottom of the pan:
If at some point, rice sticking to the pan still happens listed below are the steps on how to remove the rice that has stick to the bottom of pot.
- Soak pan in water for at least an hour. Doing so helps loosen up the rice sticking on the inner pan.
- In a 1:1 ratio of mixture (water and vinegar), cover the rice then boil the mixture. Dump the pan to the mixture. This should remove rice sticking to the bottom.
FAQs
As previously mentioned, rice usually stick to the bottom of the pot if there is not enough water, inner pan is worn off of its non stick coating. Adding more water that usual is recommended.
Rinsing the rinse is done to remove extra starch, therefore a less sticky rice result.
During the cooking process of the rice, once the water is already boiling, you can add a teaspoon of salt. There are two reasons for doing this: to remove talcum that may be present in the rice and also to remove starch.
Conclusion
Rice sticking to the bottom of the pan when you cook rice can be prevented especially when the correct cooking process is done and knowing the type of rice grain you used to cook rice is essentially important.
We hope that this article has helped you understand and learn more on the ways on how to keep the rice from sticking into the inner part of the pan and the steps on how to remove rice that stick to the pan.