Rice cooked soft and separate with a spoon of ghee, the base of the Indian plate and, in the classical view, food at its most innocent.
Lunch · 2 min prep · 18 min cook · serves 3 Newly added
Ingredients
- 1 cup basmati rice , or any everyday rice
- 1½ cups water
- to taste rock salt
- 1 tsp ghee , to serve
Preparation
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Rinse the rice in two or three changes of water until the water runs mostly clear.
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Bring the water to a boil with the salt, add the rice, and stir once.
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Cover and cook on the lowest heat 12–14 minutes until the water is absorbed.
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Rest covered 5 minutes, fluff with a fork, and serve with a spoon of ghee melting over.
In the tradition
It may seem too plain to record, but the notebook’s cook wrote it down anyway, and the classical texts agree with the instinct: well-cooked rice with ghee is the baseline of satvik eating, the food given to the unwell, the young and the fasting precisely because it asks so little of the body.
Sources & further reading
- Family recipe notebook (recipe #12, "Rice (Plain): rice, water, ghee")
- Bhāvaprakāśa Nighaṇṭu (Dhānyavarga, śāli rice described as sweet, cooling and strengthening)
Classical citations mark where a tradition is drawn on; modern books are shared as further reading, not as prescriptions.