Cooking: How to cook rice

For something to fill the blog out a bit more, I thought I'd stick one of my cooking techniques on here.........

Stuff Needed:

• Long Grain Rice (about half a cup per person is usually enough)
• Medium / large-ish saucepan
• Water
• Salt

tip: I prefer to use "Tilda Easy cook long grain rice" when doing rice, as it doesn't go too sticky / PVA glue-like if you accidently leave it cooking too long (unlike some of the cheaper supermarket own-label packets of long grain rice).

How to cook it:
1) Put water from the cold tap into the saucepan.... about 468ml will probably be enough

2) Place the saucepan full of water onto the hob / burner of the cooker, remembering to turn it onto full heat

3) Put the salt into the water - about 2teaspoons of salt maximum. This supposedly lowers the boiling point of the water. It also helps with the flavour of the rice...... put no salt in, and the rice doesn't taste of anything... put too much in and it tastes bloody awful.......... put the right amount in (2 teaspoons is the amount I've found works to perfection) and it tastes perfect.

4) Once the water starts to bubble away (which means it's boiling), tip the rice (measuring it out in a regular sized cup) into the pan of water.
If you want, you can also put in a couple of handfuls of frozen peas, or frozen mixed vegetables (e.g. peas & carrots & sweetcorn & sliced green beans, etc) to try make it a bit more interesting.

5) Leave the rice to boil away in the pan for 15-20minutes (making sure it doesn't boil dry, or it's almost impossible to get the sodding pan clean afterwards trying to get burn't rice off the bottom of it).
Most cooks / chefs recommend putting a lid on the pan........ I don't bother with one (except at the end when draining off the excess water), as when I do it's a never ending battle stopping the water from boiling over and splashing over the cooker top.

6) Once the 15-20minutes are up, drain off the water (with the aid of the pan lid) then scoop the rice out of the pan with a slotted spoon to serve it with whatever (if anything) you were planning to have with it.