The fail-safe method for cooking rice, according to a top chef

Telegraph

01-05-2025

In 2012, having gone back to India to learn to cook and returned to London to complete her legal PhD, Asma Khan started a supper club. She never looked back; constitutional law's loss was British diners' gain.
A restaurant, Darjeeling Express, followed in 2017, then two bestselling cookbooks, Asma's Indian Kitchen and Monsoon, and a memorable appearance on Netflix's Chef's Table. With her pitch-perfect riffs on Indian home cooking and her all-female kitchen team, Khan has become an inspirational figure, so much so that last year Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In February, the King and Queen stopped by her restaurant for a biryani ahead of Ramadan.
Now, Khan has made a 10-part series, Secrets of the Curry Kitchen, aimed at demystifying her cooking for viewers at home.
'A lot of the confusion about what people think is Indian cooking comes from a misunderstanding,' Khan says, sitting in her restaurant, which moved from Covent Garden back to its original home in Soho's Kingly Court in 2023, on a sunny April morning before service. 'It's very simple, it's very modular. I show the way we build in flavours, step-by-step. How we use whole spices, how we use ginger, garlic, onions. Once you perfect one dish, you can cook anything.'
And it all starts with rice. In the series, Khan says that love and time are two of the most important ingredients in her cooking and the same is true with rice.
'I struggled to make rice at the beginning,' she says. 'When I came to this country I didn't know how to cook. My husband made rice and it was like glue. Absolutely terrible. So my first thing was to get the rice perfect. Everyone cooks perfect rice in Bengal, before you do anything else, because you probably stood there watching. Nobody gives step-by-step directions. But I had to learn step by step. I was taught by my old family cook, who took me through it.'
She recommends the absorption method of cooking, as it is more forgiving than draining the rice as you do with pasta. A heavy-bottomed pot which distributes heat evenly is important, too; test it by boiling water on its own and seeing where the bubbles rise up.
Asma Khan's 10-step method for perfect rice
Click here for the full recipe
Washing the rice correctly is vital. 'Do not put the rice in a sieve and run it under a tap; it's a disaster. The velocity of the water will break the edges,' she warns. 'The tips are so fragile they will bang against each other and break. That tip of rice will end up in the pot, cook super fast and become the 'glue', causing havoc, making the rice soggy.' Instead, you need to wash the rice 'like you would use a spatula when you are baking a cake, in one direction', she says. 'Put it in a bowl and pour the water in from the side, then swirl it in one direction until it is clear. You might think it is never going to happen, but be patient.'
Another benefit of removing the excess starch like this, she adds, is that it makes the rice less calorific.
'Then soak the rice for at least 20 minutes, or up to an hour. Rice is very porous, so the grains absorb the water and change colour, becoming whiter and fatter. Pour the rice onto a tray [lined] with kitchen paper to get rid of the excess liquid. Then add two cups of water for every cup of rice. Again, it's important to be gentle; you don't want the starch to break.'
The grains should be loose enough to simmer up in the pot but otherwise be left undisturbed. Then, once all the visible water has gone, put the lid on it. 'Ten minutes would be perfect,' Khan says. 'Then take a fork and fluff it up gently.'
With perfect rice, you have the basis for pilau and biryani, two of the most versatile dishes in Indian cooking. It was these that Charles and Camilla enjoyed when they visited the restaurant in February.
'Even the King, who's been served rice in palaces all over the world, told me this was the best rice he had ever had,' she says. 'He had two pilaus and a biryani, then he packed a takeaway. He loved going into the kitchen, he spoke to all the women. What really moved my team was his humility. One of the women in my kitchen is a Gurkha widow. He walked up to her and said 'I am so grateful for the sacrifice of your husband and all the Gurkhas.' All my women were weeping.'
'Every child in India has the rice feeding ceremony when they are weaned,' Khan adds. 'It welcomes the child to the world of food. There is a beauty to rice. It is a blessing. There is a magic to well-made rice. My mother would always tell me my name was written on every grain, so eat it with respect.'