Effect of rice cooking techniques

Rice is mostly made of starch. Starch is, in itself, a molecule made up of glucose components attached to each other. There are two types of starch: Amylose - it is a long straight chain of glucose - and amylopectin, which has a branchy and fuzzy structure. When you cook a rice which is rich in amylose, the grains stay separate. When you cook rice which is high in amylopectin, its starch molecules catch on each other and cause clumping. So the main factor is indeed the type of rice. While the amylopectin rich varieties in general are short grained and amylose rich ones are long grained, it can be that you accidentally picked a non-sticky short-grained rice.

Washing will cause less sticking. Normally, the starch in rice has to be released from the cells before it can stick. In a bag of rice, there are many cells which are broken mechanically during handling/transport, and their starch is free, clinging to the surface. If you wash it away first, you have less sticky grain so less clumping.

Now for soaking. Starches are packed very close in a grain. For gelation (that's when they cook and swell) you need both enough water and the right temp (70 degr. C). As heating is quicker than water penetration, presoaking makes things quicker. I guess soaking will help stickiness a bit, because there will be more molcules ready to swell in a short time. Plus, some of these will come undone from the grains and start swimming free around. This turns the water itself into a weak glue (so don' discard).

Using less water will help with stickiness. This will result in a bigger concentration of free starches in the water.

A slow simmering should also promote clumping slightly, as the starches will have more time to swell, move around, and hook to new starches.

All arguments above are the theoretical explanation for the direction in which the factors you mention are likely to influence clumping, given that the rice is always the same. In practice, their effect should be much smaller than choosing the correct type of rice. In fact, amylopectin rich rice types aren't soaked as often, because they don't need it - amylose is packed tighter. I don't know about washing habits, but it is cooked with less water, because it needs less. And any rice should be cooked slowly, a hot boil overcooks the outside and leaves the inside hard.

In the end, if your wife wants the rice she is familiar with, you must buy short-grain japonica rice. Else ask for a "sticky" indica, that's better than just eyeballing grain length.

There are a number of things that effect the resulting product when cooking rice. It comes down to two factors. The length of the grain and the way it is prepared. The shorter the grain, the more starch is released. A short grain rice, will tend to clump together as their will be a lot of starch released to the surface and all around it. Longer grains will not release as much starch, so you get individual clean grains.

Brown rice is rice, that hasn't had the bran removed. White, polished rice, is simply the same grain, with the bran taken off. The bran contains lots of nutrients and adds a new level to the flavour, but also significantly slows down the cooking time.

So... regarding some of your discrepancies:

• I generally wash my rice. There is usually enough starch in whichever rice I pick for the application. If I want clumpy rice, I use a short grain. If I want individual grains, I go for a long grain.
• Soaking is a way to cut down on cooking time, as it can be done before hand. A soaked rice grain, will absorb some of the water, so it will cook faster. This is useful, for brown rice which takes much longer to cook.
• Less/more water... I find that usually it's pretty exact. A cooked grain will take the same amount of water to cook. I'm not sure why you'd want extra water other than being unable to measure in the first place... I use what my mom/grandmother taught me. Touch the top of the rice with your pointer finger, add water to the first knuckle. Works every time.

Alton Brown has some really good explanations of different grains and cooking methods in a few Good Eats episodes:

• From Season 1, Power to the Pilaf: About half way in he describes all of the different rice characteristics and how it affects cooking.
• From Season 8, Do The Rice Thing

To avoid the water issue I just add far more water than required and then use a strainer to get the rice as soon as it's done.

The thing I heard about washing it first is that there can be grains in the rice that don't become soft when cooked and this can give you the feeling of having very very fine sand in the rice. I never had this issue so I don't wash my rice.

Soaking, as talon8 pointed out is only really a thing for brown rice for reducing the time to prepare the rice immensly.

When it comes to water temperature, I boil it so that there are bubbles but not too strong so there is no foan boiling over. The bubbles keep the grains moving and I assume that this reduces the cooking speed slightly.

I think that there aren't any differences when it comes to taste, at least I didn't notice any. Just figure out what works for you :)

Get a rice cooker, first of all. Perfect rice every time with no effort. Secondly if you want rice that sticks together well, use nishiki white rice and do 1.5 to 2 parts water to rice in your cooker. Don't use oil. When your cooker flips from "cook" to "warm" let it sit at warm for 30 minutes.

If you want rice that doesn't stick, use 1:1 ratio with a little sesame oil and take it off the heat after the original cook time is up.

No need to wash or soak with either.

The real steam method as follows might work for you:

1. Wash the rice as usual.
2. Soak for 30 minutes if desired. (For people preferring a firmer texture, skip this)
3. Pour in hot water (same amount as the rice, i.e. 1 cup rice to 1 cup of water). Again, adjust to taste. Less water for firmer texture. More for softer.
4. Put the bowl into a steam pot (the kind that you use to steam dim-sum, or just a larger regular pot with enough water and a small rack at the bottom to hold up the bowl). Steam for 40 minutes.

I wash my rice Everytime. This allows me to more likely get rid of any foreign particles. When rice is washed you can see the some of the starch washing away. I usually wash mine 3 times. The more water in the pot, the less stickier it Cooks. If there is too much water then it turns into rice porridge.