How Long To Boil Rice (And Why)?

Exact Answer: 30 Minutes

Rice is one of the most widely consumed grains in the world. It forms a major part of cuisines and is the most common staple dish for inhabitants of Asia and Africa. After sugarcane and maize, rice accounts for the highest agricultural production worldwide.

Rice is a dish considered rich in carbohydrates and helps to complete the dietary needs of the people. Just like the human body, cooked rice is approximately seventy per cent water. Apart from water and carbohydrates, it also provides the human body with protein, fat and certain other important nutrients.

How Long To Boil Rice?

Cooking rice is one of the most simple and basic recipes ever. A person merely needs to boil the required amount of rice in a certain amount of water, which is double of it. Apart from that, there are no complex procedures and methods to cook it.

Various types of rice are grown all over the world. Almost all have separate requirements in terms of boiling time. However, white rice and brown rice are the two most common types of rice consumed around the world.

While preparing white rice, care has to be taken to rinse the rice for some time to eliminate the presence of dusty starches. The chef would now be required to take the double amount of water in a utensil and bring it to a boil. Water starts boiling within 5 minutes while on heat.

As soon as the water starts turning to steam, one has to add rice to it. The steam will subside and the cook should let the rice boil for about 15 to 20 minutes. Conversely, till the rice becomes soft and tender, it needs to be boiled.

In contrast to this, the preparation of brown rice takes much more time. Brown rice needs to be boil for approximately 25 to 30 minutes or half an hour. In addition to this, brown rice might also require soaking in water for a few hours before boiling it to speed the cooking process.

Why Boiling Rice Takes So Long?

Boiling rice is a necessary step to make it edible. Rice must be soft and tender or in other words, easily chewable. Unproperly cooked rice might cause stomach aches or other such problems.

This makes it important for the rice to be boiled for a good amount of time. However, cooking rice for a fixed period is not a hard rule, but a flexible one. Rice can be put off the boil, once the cook infers that the rice is ready to eat.

Cooking rice requires the water to be brought to a boil before adding rice to it. This makes the water hot and speeds up the process of cooking rice when rice is added to it.

Now, as the rice would be added to the boiling water in the utensil, the cold rice will absorb the heat leading to a temperature fall and sopping of the boil. However, as the rice will be on heat after some time the steam will re-emerge and will continue till it is cooked.

The brown rice takes more time to boil owing to its difference in structure with white rice. Brown rice is a full-grain implying that it has all three parts of the grain, namely the bran, the endosperm, and the germ. The layer of thick bran is removed from white rice and so, the brown rice takes more time to boil than the white rice.

Conclusion

Cooking rice is a simple dish. A staple dish for nearly half of the world’s population, one needs to boil it for an appropriate time to make it consumable. White rice takes up to 15 to 20 minutes to boil, while brown rice takes nearly 25 to 30 minutes to be ready to eat.

The structure of the rice grain is a major factor behind these time durations. White rice has the thick bran layer removed from its grain and so it gets cooked up faster. In contrast to this, brown rice comes with bran layers which increases the time requirements.

References

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0045653598001386
2. https://aocs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1007/BF02545312