Yeah, the study said it has no effect on the stickiness of the rice.
Which is bizarre, because I’ve…seen it. Like repeatedly. And it’s not a subtle difference. When I am lazy and don’t wash my rice, it comes out MUCH gooier. It’s not terrible but it’s significantly different than when I wash it well.
Is this going to make me buy a second rice cooker to compare side by side? Ugh.
The popular press report says that washing doesn’t make a difference. The actual, paywalled study says they did find a highly significant interaction between washing and type of rice, which is a level of statistical sophistication that a food writer might not grasp. In fact, even the scientific authors seem not to have commented much on the interaction.
In their data, it looks like washing 0-amylose glutinous rice makes it more sticky, while washing medium-grain 21% amylose rice even just 3 times makes it less sticky, and that 13% amylose Jasmine rice is just kind of all over the place or not systematically influenced by washing. They didn’t do a big table of adjusted post hocs, so it’s difficult to tell which specific groups are different from which others.
They also cooked the rices differently, using 1:1.3 rice:water for the glutinous and 1:1.6 for the medium and Jasmine, which obviously might confound their observations.
I’ve seen it, too. When I want fluffy individual grains, I rinse the rice first. If I want sticky rice, I don’t rinse it. And it works for all different kinds of rice.
There’s going to be powdered starch on the outside of the grains of rice. If you rinsed it and then added something like corn starch to the water you’d end up with sticky rice.
Yeah, the study said it has no effect on the stickiness of the rice.
Which is bizarre, because I’ve…seen it. Like repeatedly. And it’s not a subtle difference. When I am lazy and don’t wash my rice, it comes out MUCH gooier. It’s not terrible but it’s significantly different than when I wash it well.
Is this going to make me buy a second rice cooker to compare side by side? Ugh.
The popular press report says that washing doesn’t make a difference. The actual, paywalled study says they did find a highly significant interaction between washing and type of rice, which is a level of statistical sophistication that a food writer might not grasp. In fact, even the scientific authors seem not to have commented much on the interaction.
In their data, it looks like washing 0-amylose glutinous rice makes it more sticky, while washing medium-grain 21% amylose rice even just 3 times makes it less sticky, and that 13% amylose Jasmine rice is just kind of all over the place or not systematically influenced by washing. They didn’t do a big table of adjusted post hocs, so it’s difficult to tell which specific groups are different from which others.
They also cooked the rices differently, using 1:1.3 rice:water for the glutinous and 1:1.6 for the medium and Jasmine, which obviously might confound their observations.
I’ve seen it, too. When I want fluffy individual grains, I rinse the rice first. If I want sticky rice, I don’t rinse it. And it works for all different kinds of rice.
There’s going to be powdered starch on the outside of the grains of rice. If you rinsed it and then added something like corn starch to the water you’d end up with sticky rice.
I agree. Also depends on the rice. Basmati doesn’t seem to stick like most white rices.