I Gift This Persian Rice Cooker to All My Friends
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Naz Deravian, a food writer and author of the cookbookBottom of the Pot,details her go-to gift, a Persian rice cooker, and everything you need to know to make the perfect pot of rice.
Rice is a very important dish at the Persian table. The traditional preparation of it is a little involved: There’s this two-step process of parboiling the rice and then steaming it, because you ultimately want every grain of rice to be fluffy and elongated and beautiful. Then you have that coveted tahdig, the crispy rice at the bottom of the pot.That process takes a little practice and time, but there’s also a Persian rice cooker, which does everything for you. You put everything in it, you turn the dial, you come back in an hour, you put your platter over the insert, you flip it, and you have this amazing tahdig. Everyone loses their mind. You can pretend you did all the work yourself. I don’t, because I’m the first one to say you have to get thisrice cooker. It’ll change your world.
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I bought my first one when I moved out on my own. I really missed and craved my Iranian home-cooked meals. I always like to say I was starving — not literally, but figuratively — for a taste of home. So that’s when I really started cooking for myself, because I had to. Now, some people like to say using a Persian rice cooker is cheating:You don’t really know how to cook a pot of rice.I don’t care for any of that. To me, what’s important is that people start making this type of rice. So I gift this rice cooker to everybody because I know it will be a hit, and I know in busy homes it’ll get used. I have given it to my mother-in-law and my father-in-law, colleagues, my publisher, my editor, my agent. I actually have to keep a list to remind myself who I’ve gifted it to. To make it really sweet, you can put a bag of rice in it, too. Then I hand it off with my own instructions, or if we’re really, really close and sitting around the dinner table, I’ll just tell them how to use it.
There will be a bit of trial and error. You have to become one with your rice cooker. It’s kind of like dating. You have to get to know each other, and by the third try, hopefully it’ll be smooth. Still, every single friend that I have gifted this to will tell me that it’s become a part of their weekly meal plan because it really does save the day. I think even if you’re a single person living alone, a smaller one is just very comforting. You get that aroma of the rice wafting through your home, and it’s so welcoming, and you just feel really taken care of.
How I Make Tahdig With the Rice Cooker
For Persian-style rice, we use long-grain rice. You can’t find Iranian rice here because of the sanctions, so we all lean on basmati. It’s an Indian rice, but it’s the closest that you can get to Iranian rice. I think one of the reasons people have such a hard time with rice is because they assume all rice is the same, and that is just not true. You don’t want the grains to be pearly white, because that shows that it’s a new harvest. You want it to be about a year-old harvest, because that’ll make the rice so much more fragrant and tasty. When I open my bag of uncooked rice, you can smell it: There’s a deep perfume to the rice, which you want to be hit with. I use the ten-pound bag of Royal Chef’s Secret extra-long-grain rice. I don’t even settle for the long grain. They make smaller bags, too, but what I tell people is, when you start using the rice cooker, you will buy the ten-pound bag because you’ll be making rice so much.
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First, you want to rinse that rice, because you want to rinse off the starches, which make the rice clumpier. You also want to rinse the rice because it comes from the earth. I’ve read so many articles about “should you rinse your rice?” Just rinse the rice. It takes two minutes. Then, let’s say if you’re putting in three cups of rice, you add four cups of water, so you’re adding one cup more water than you are of rice. Then you add a little salt. You want this to be tasty, so I do a half-teaspoon of fine-grain sea salt or table salt per cup of rice. You also need oil to make that crunchy rice at the bottom. I use olive oil, but you can use a neutral oil or butter. Now, you can get fancy with this. You can add saffron to it. You could add a little turmeric, too. But for a primer of just making a really great pot of rice, it’s just what I said — the salt and the oil or butter. Then you give it a gentle stir and you plug it in. There’s a knob with different grades of color, which are the color of your tahdig. I suggest everyone turn theirs to the full one hour and just let it cook. You don’t do anything at all. You come back an hour later and put a platter over it and flip it. You don’thaveto put a platter over it, but it’s for the wow factor.
Here’s the other thing: The rice cooker has a nonstick-coated insert because that’s how you get that crunchy rice to release. I baby that insert. So I don’t allow anyone except for myself and my husband to wash that insert. Please do not get in there with your metal spatulas, because once you get a nick in the nonstick insert, that’s it. If you damage the insert, you don’t need to replace the whole thing, but you’ll have to replace the insert. Once it’s washed and clean, I put a paper towel on the surface of the insert, because I store the power cord inside the cooker.
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