Creole Boiled Rice

Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 0 min (I already factored Boiled Rice prep into the prep time for Shrimp Etouffee
Total Cook Time: about 25 min

Ingredients:
1 cup long grain white rice
1 quart water
1 tbsp salt
3 bay leaves
1-2 tbsp unsalted butter

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. In a medium-sized saucepan, bring the water to a boil (with the bay leaves added). Add the salt and rice to the water and stir gently just to mix everything together then don’t stir again. Once the water comes back to a boil, halfway cover the pot and let the rice cook for about 10-12 min. After 10 min, taste the rice…you want it to have a little bit of texture, but you don’t want it to be crunchy or hard…kind of like al dente pasta.

Once the rice reaches the correct state of doneness, strain it, then lay it out on a baking sheet and discard the bay leaves. Cut the butter into slivers and place the slivers over the rice. Then put the baking sheet in the oven for 10-15 min. The rice is ready to serve when removed from the oven.

Why go through all of this trouble to make rice when you can just use a rice cooker? Well, I find that when I use the rice cooker, the rice comes out sticky and a bit moist, which isn’t a bad thing, but that’s not what we’re going for here. For the Etoufee, we want the exact opposite for the rice…we want it to be light, fluffy, and non-sticky. The short boiling time and minimal stirring help make this happen. Then the oven is used to dry off the excess water that isn’t absorbed during the cooking process. I think it’s worth the extra effort.