Pressure Cooker Rice
"There is more than one way to cook a plum" as the old Hungarian saying goes and this holds just as true for rice.
One method I have experimented with in the past while looking for the fastest way to cook rice is with a pressure cooker.
Pressure cooking has had somewhat of a revival in recent years after decades of decline as cooks have rediscovered that it is one of the fastest ways to get food cooked. Unfortunately in my experience this does not hold true for rice as it still takes about 20 minutes all told to get the rice cooked, more or less the average for a conventional electric rice cooker.
Here is a break down on the timing and the methods I used for Thai jasmine rice.
Wash 1 cup of the rice in cold water a couple of times to remove excess starch.
Place the rice in a bowl with 1 cup of water (or stock) and put this bowl onto a stand in the pressure cooker which also contains 1 cup of water.
From here it takes approximately 3 minutes to bring the water to the boil and get the pressure cooking steaming.
I cook the rice under pressure for 6 minutes and then turn off the heat and allow the pressure to dissipate naturally, another 6 minutes.
I open the pressure cooker, fluff up the rice and let it stand for 5 minutes before serving.
All told about 20 minutes.
There are other advantages to cooking rice with a pressure cooker though. The actual cook time is only 6 minutes so that should be a considerable saving in energy over other methods. And the rice itself when cooked under pressure has a softer consistency nearer to that of Japanese rice.
The main disadvantage is of course the same as when you are boiling rice in a pot, you need to be on hand to get the timing right.
