Ricericericericerice! It’s so good. But when it’s too wet, white rice turns gummy, brown rice explodes and turns into mush. I prefer the grains to be thoroughly cooked but distinct unless deliberately aiming for a stickier rice.
I liked the idea of placing one’s hand on top of the rice and pouring in water until it reached the knuckle of the middle finger. But when I tried it, it didn’t work and I theorized at the time that either my hands were too small or my pot was too big. So I use a measuring cup and measure exactly one and one-quarter cups of water for each cup of grain.
After washing grain, I tip it into a mesh colander, let it drain for a few minutes and then shake it a bit to eliminate any extra water the rice is retaining. I put a measuring cup under a colander of washed rice once. In the space of a couple of minutes it yielded an extra (unwanted) half cup of water.That can make a big difference.
In a rice cooker, you can add the rice, the water, and a little salt at the same time, swirl it to submerge all of the rice, flip the switch and ignore it. The instructions that come with some rice cookers advise against cooking heavier grains in them, but I use mine to cook white and brown rice, kamut, spelt, barley, wild rice or combinations of all of the above and they always come out well. When I cook more than five cups of these, I add a smidgen more water (maybe two to three tablespoons per cup.) Porous grains such as white rice take 30 to 40 minutes in my rice cooker; brown rice and larger grains take the best part of an hour.
When I cook grain on the stove, I use a heavy pot, bring the water to a boil first (with a little salt added) and don’t let myself walk away from the stove while the water is coming to a boil because once it begins to boil, the water evaporates very quickly. The moment it boils, I add the washed rice and just swirl it in the pot - enough to make sure that it is covered by the water, rather than stirring it. Then I cover it with a lid, reduce the heat to minimum and leave it alone. It takes about 25 minutes to cook white rice on a stove, 40 to 50 for brown.
To make crispy rice, I leave "pot rice" on the burner for an extra 15 to 20 minutes. With white rice, and the right timing, a lacy, delicate, chewy crust forms on the bottom of the pot that will break into pieces easily.