Video: Atsushi's Way to Wash Rice Perfectly

This post caught my eye because rice washing is something I too wrote about because it is an essential component in making an arresting bowl of rice. I arrived in Japan in 1988 and my first Japanese cookbook, The Heart of Zen Cuisine, gave a lyrical explanation of the rice washing process. Try as I might, I really did not get it, fresh off the boat, with no understanding of the growing of (and culture of) rice. Zoom up 23 years, living on an organic farm here, I've helped periodically with the rice planting and harvesting. And now I get why each little grain is like a god, to be lovingly scrubbed and gently washed. And interestingly enough my husband's method of rice washing (passed onto me) is exactly the same as the one in the Heart of Zen Cuisine. One more piece in the puzzle is that the ghost writer of that book, Kim Schuefftan, is now one of my dearest friends and lives in a mountain town near us. I've watched both Atsushi-san's and Nobuko-san's rice washing and find the cultural differences interesting. Atsushi-san is a young chef in the City living in the U.S., so goes for a more streamlined method; while Nobuko-san seems to live in a urban Japanese area, so works with smaller portions with economical restraint. On the farm, we rinse off bugs & debris with one huge water fill; then scrub mindfully. After that, we repeatedly flood the rice with water, filling the rice cooker receptacle to the very top, and pour off the water (without fussing with strainers). This fill and dump process can go as many as 10 times for farm rice...something I find more comforting than "clean" rice that can run clear after 4 rinces. But I'm old fashioned like that. Thanks for this post, I was just thinking about rice this very day.

This is definitely an easier method as one is not losing any of the rice when rinsing. However, the first method I noticed that the 'momma' used her fist to swirl the rice where as here he does not put any effort into that. However, I see that the water left in the rice can easily come out with the strainer whereas I have found that my rice is sometimes mushy with the other method. I do want to say; until this blog I have never washed my rice. Now I wouldn't make rice without washing it first. Letting it sit for a half hour is also a necessity to rid the rice of even the tiniest excess water