This Is Martha Stewart's Method For Perfect Rice

There are few foods as simple and delicious as a bowl of perfectly cooked white rice. There are also plenty of opinions as to the best way to prepare the dish: What home cooks want to know is a fast way to make rice that's perfectly cooked and flavorful. Martha Stewart has got us covered, and shared her method for prepping this staple carb with Insider. For Stewart, a pot of perfect rice begins not with rice but with oil and aromatics. She heats olive oil and then adds in diced shallots, garlic, and onions to gently sauté. One of her tips during this process is not to crowd the pot, which was also one of Julia Child's famous pieces of advice when sautéing, according to Kitchen Stories. When it comes to food that releases water, overcrowding them in a pot will inhibit the browning that sautés are meant to bring to food. 

Stewart gets the rice ready by rinsing it, which removes excess starch from the grains so that they'll be more fluffy when cooked. When the aromatics are cooked, she stirs in the rinsed rice to sauté until the grains begin to look translucent. Next comes the water. 

After the rice is sautéd, Martha Stewart shared with Insider that the next step is to pour in boiling water. She noted that the proper ratio for white rice is two cups of water for every one cup of rice. When adding the boiling water, she adds only half of it to start. "Let it cook down," she told the publication. "Then you add the rest of the water, cover the pot, and put it on a pretty high heat until it's done." It's quickly finished once the water has cooked away, leaving fluffy rice that's lightly flavored.

Stewart has a few other rice tips as well: For one, she prefers to use only organic rice. Think Organics reports that rice grown with the help of pesticides tends to have higher levels of toxins including arsenic, whereas organic rice is grown with only natural fertilizers. Stewart also warns that brown rice and white rice won't cook up the same way. For brown, the amount of water used should be less: For a cup of long-grain brown rice, use 1 ¼ cups of water for every cup of rice. For short-grain, use 1 ½ cups for every cup of rice, Stewart advises on her site. Brown rice needs a longer cooking time than white, but Stewart says to ignore package directions that recommend nearly an hour. "We think 30 minutes is plenty," she writes. Then, give the brown rice another 10 minutes off the heat to rest covered, to "absorb maximum moisture," Stewart says.