Rice is tricky. In a perfect world, your rice would come out fluffy every time, with each grain separate and intact. But in the event that luck or skill are not on your side, rice may either overcook and become mushy, or stay chalky and hard in the middle. If that should happen to you, no worries! There’s a fix.

The fix is simple. I call it “the paper towel trick.” I figured it out quite by accident when my rice came out “wrong.” I laid paper towels over the top of the pot, closed the lid, and let it sit for 15 minutes. When I lifted up the paper towels, the rice had changed and morphed into the form it was always meant to take. It was perfectly fluffy, and perfectly delicious.I now use the paper towel trick, every time I make rice, even when it comes out great. The paper towel trick makes it even better! I even use the paper towel trick (using pre-ripped paper towels) for pans of rice that I then place on the Shabbat hotplate.

Make sure the toweling is short enough that it doesn’t reach the hot surface of your hotplate. If you refrigerate the rice with the paper toweling, the paper will become very wet. Lift it off and replace it with new paper towels before putting the pan of rice onto the hotplate.