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Food

Everything You Know About Cooking Rice Is a Lie

Anybody who’s ever graced a kitchen knows that the key to toothsome yet pillowy rice is making sure that you use a two-to-one ratio of water-to-rice. Too bad its also a complete and total falsehood.

For most of the world, rice is clear and away the life-giving sovereign of all foodstuffs. The cereal grain is such an indisputable part of life for most that it still is thought of as belonging in the realm of deities. Whether we're talking about Japan's Inari Ōkami, the Igorot people's use of Bulul as rice guardians, or the widely worshipped Dewi Sri of Java and Bali, rice is clearly more than a staple ingredient for most humans—it is life itself.

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Despite all that, most Westerners will tell you they still have no clue how to properly cook a cup of rice without ruining a pot or two in the process.

READ MORE: Is Fake Rice Actually Circulating Throughout Asia?

Anybody who's ever graced a kitchen with his or her presence knows that the key to toothsome yet pillowy rice is making sure that you use a two-to-one ratio of water-to-rice. Too bad its also a complete and total falsehood. At least it is according to Dan Souza, the senior editor of Cook's Illustrated at America's Test Kitchen. Souza set out to find the scientific answer to cooking rice well by examining exactly what the water-to-rice ratio should be.

Souza began with an experiment. He took one cup of rice and one cup of water and put them in a completely sealed bag. He then put the airtight bag in boiling water. He found that no matter what type of rice he cooked, it took exactly one cup of water to cook the rice. That's significantly less than the two cups of water typically recommended.

So what gives? Why in the real world doesn't a one-to-one water-to-rice ratio work?

It pretty much all comes down to evaporation. When you make rice in your own home and not in a sealed bag in a lab, you need to add more water to allow for evaporation—but how much varies depending on the fickle mistress that is evaporation.

Things get even more complicated when you try to cook more than just one cup of rice. The reason for that, Souza says, is the unpredictable nature of larger amounts of water evaporating—or not. Pot size and lid fit can factor in and screw up your rice.

READ MORE: Some California Rice Farmers Would Rather Sell Water Than Plant Crops

The solution, Souza says, is to try to limit evaporation. A tight lid is key. Plus, trial and error will tell you exactly how much water your particular pot size and the humidity in your environment requires. Souza explained to Business Insider, "Evaporation isn't a consistent thing, cook to cook, kitchen to kitchen," he explained. "If you have a pot with not a very good lid, you're going to get more evaporation. If it's really tight, you're going to get less evaporation."

So if you can master evaporation, you should be making rice like a Japanese grandma—or certain fox deities of rice, for that matter.