Comment by mytailorisrich
6 months ago
The "standard" method used by East Asians is to wash the rice several times until water is clear before cooking. This waste water is said to be good to water plants with and accounts for most of the water needed.
Interesting. I was unaware of that being a thing. Is there any point/benefit to that?
Rinsing the starch off the rice results in the cooked rice having a significantly different texture. It's how you get fluffy and not very sticky rice, which is typically what you want for east asian dishes. Some rice dishes specifically need you to not rinse the rice.
Rinse rice a couple of times and the water goes from cloudy to clear. One might imagine that the rice clumps together less and has a "cleaner" mouth-feel.
Adam Ragusea has a good video on this topic: https://youtu.be/B3CHsbNkr3c