Microwave Rice: A Test Kitchen Cautionary Tale

Janet gave me a New York Times "recipe of the day" calendar for Christmas. Each morning, I pull the page, read it, and either keep it or toss it. On February 25th — my younger son's 36th birthday (note to self: text him later) — I pulled the page and couldn't get past the title.

Microwave rice. As in take a grain with centuries of cultural reverence — entire culinary traditions built upon it — and cook it in a microwave. Not reheat it, which is something microwaves excel at, but cook it from scratch. The recipe went so far as to claim a microwave can produce an excellent bowl of rice.

So, of course, I had to try it.

A few weeks earlier, I'd chatted with a Filipino sushi chef in St. Lucia — Chef Emery — who described his training in rice as a "crash course." He spent eight months learning how to make rice — a traditional sushi training program in Tokyo spends three full years just on rice. I'm quite sure cooking it in a microwave wasn't on the syllabus in either course.

Janet, who gifted me the calendar and therefore bears some responsibility for what followed, wisely stayed out of the kitchen. I made the recipe for no other reason than to satisfy my skepticism toward kitchen hacks that promise to outsmart centuries of technique.

Because they usually don’t.

One cup of jasmine rice, rinsed in a sieve to remove excess starch (the recipe insisted; I complied, though I don't normally bother). Into a microwave-safe (duh) three-quart dish with two cups of water. High power, twenty minutes.

At the twenty-minute mark, with the rice still swimming in excess water, I added another five minutes. Incrementally, like the recipe directed. Then a five-minute rest, door closed, power off — finish by fluffing with a fork.

The recipe instructs that the rice is done when the grains are poking up like grass and are tender and the water is fully absorbed. Oh, and the grains shouldn’t look wet or mushy. The water was fully absorbed. The grains were poking up like grass. They were neither wet nor mushy, I’ll give them that. Trouble is, when I tried to fluff them with a fork — they didn’t fluff. They were poking up like grass after someone has hit the lawn with a blow torch. Dry, crunchy rice, and not the good al dente kind either. The distinctly dispiriting microwave kind — simultaneously overcooked and undercooked, which is such a culinary paradox it's almost impressive.

Chef Emery spent eight months learning to make rice. I spent twenty-five minutes proving why that matters.

The most disappointing part wasn't even the texture. It was that this wonder recipe didn't save me any time. My stovetop rice takes roughly the same twenty-five minutes. So does my Instant Pot in rice cooker mode, and both yield better rice. The Instant Pot is my actual preferred method — plump, slightly sticky grains, toothsome without being gummy. As close to truly excellent rice as a self-trained home cook without three years of sushi training can reasonably manage.

Test kitchen result: failure.

Not a me failure — I have no problem owning those, and I've got plenty of practice. No, this was a recipe failure. I followed the instructions to the letter.

The card went in the trash. The rice went in the trash. Then I texted my son happy birthday.