How To Cook Short Grain Rice

I'm going to show you how to cook short grain rice. I've got a nice hot pan, on the go with some olive oil. I've got some vegetable stock, could be chicken, entirely your choice.

Now with short grain rice, you can boil, and you can refresh, and you can use it for other stuff, but I'm going to show you the risotto-type way of doing it. So, like I said, pan of hot olive oil; I've got some red onion going through there as well. Now, it's all about preparation.

I've got my stock for my recipe ready to add to my pan. It doesn't have to be red onion. It can be shallots; it can be white onion.

It can be peppers. It's totally up to you. It's all about your taste.

Now, we don't have to wash the short grain rice because the way we're cooking it doesn't allow enough starch to be released. So we're going to sweat off. Now, at this stage, all you want to be doing is sweating down the onions and sweating down the rice.

The rice will absorb all the olive oil, keeping your temperature at a medium heat. Then slowly, slowly, you add your stock. Again, letting the rice absorb all the stock, we're looking to get our rice al dente.

Al dente is soft to the tooth in Italian. When saying our rice is just cooked, let that simmer away for a bit. You can add white wine to this, you can add sherry vinegar.

Again, it's all about personal taste. I'm just showing you now. It's a slow process of how to cook this short grain rice, the risotto-style way of doing it.

So, again, we'll cook it and let that broth evaporate through the rice. Now I've used a vegetable cube here so it's not fresh stock, but it's just as good. Again, it starts to absorb all that water or stock, and we slowly add more.

Again, a low temperature there, keep it nice and at this stage, we can add some pepper. Now, any chef in a restaurant, when he's cooking risotto, he literally won't have cooking rice and to cool it off very quickly, he doesn't want to wash off any of the flavors. He lays it on the tray there and lets it cool down naturally.

We're cooking very nicely now. We'll cook that another three to four minutes and we'll have a nice al dente type rice. So coming back to my rice, a lot of the moisture has been taken out, so let's double check what stage we're at with my rice.

Absolutely tasty, al dente, exactly how I want it. I'll put my spoon back. I still have moisture in my rice, the flavor is there and I'll just take it off.

I'm happy with it. I can let that cool down on another tray and reheat when I eat it. Absolutely fantastic, really, really tasty, and that's how I cook my short grain rice. .