How to Make Sticky Rice

Real sticky rice is a specific grain. It is sold as glutinous rice, sweet rice, or Thai sticky rice, and no amount of technique will turn jasmine or basmati into it. If the bag does not say one of those words, you will end up with wet rice instead of sticky rice.

The traditional method soaks the grains overnight. The hot-soak shortcut below gets you there in about twenty minutes of soaking, and the result is close enough that most people cannot tell.

How Long to Soak Sticky Rice

This is the question that decides everything, so here are the real numbers.

• Hot soak, 20 to 30 minutes. Boiling water poured over rinsed rice. What the steps below use.
• Warm soak, 2 to 3 hours. Tap water on the warm side. A middle option if you are cooking later today.
• Cold soak, 6 to 12 hours. The traditional overnight method. Best texture by a small margin, and the one to use if you plan ahead.

Under-soaked rice steams up with a hard, chalky center. Over-soaking is much harder to do, but past about fifteen hours the grains start breaking down and turn gummy.

The Steamer Method

Steaming is how sticky rice is made in Thailand and Laos, and it gives the best texture: separate, glossy, chewy grains that pull apart in a ball.

The full steps with photos are below. The outline is short. Rinse until the water runs almost clear, pour boiling water over the rice and leave it twenty minutes, drain it, line a steamer basket with cheesecloth, and steam over rapidly boiling water for about twenty minutes, flipping the mass halfway.

You do not need a bamboo basket. A metal steamer insert lined with cheesecloth or a clean thin towel works the same. What matters is that steam moves through the rice instead of the rice sitting in water.

How to Cook Sticky Rice on the Stove Without a Steamer

You can do it in a regular pot, and plenty of people search for exactly this. The texture comes out softer and slightly stickier than steamed, closer to what you get at a Thai restaurant that is doing volume.

1. Rinse one cup of sticky rice until the water runs mostly clear.
2. Soak it in hot water for at least thirty minutes, then drain.
3. Put the drained rice in a heavy pot with three quarters of a cup of water. Less water than normal rice, because the grains are already hydrated.
4. Bring to a boil uncovered, then drop to the lowest heat, cover, and leave it fifteen minutes. Do not lift the lid.
5. Take it off the heat and let it sit covered another ten minutes before fluffing.

The ratio is the part people get wrong. Soaked sticky rice needs roughly three quarters as much water as rice by volume. Use the one-to-one ratio you would use for jasmine and you get porridge.

The Rice Cooker Version

Soak as above, drain, then add the rice to the cooker with three quarters of a cup of water per cup of rice and run a normal white rice cycle. Let it rest on warm for ten minutes after the cycle ends.

Some cookers have a dedicated sweet rice or glutinous setting. If yours does, use it and follow the cooker's water line rather than the ratio above.

Why Rinsing Matters

Sticky rice carries a lot of loose surface starch. Rinsing removes it. Skip the rinse and that starch turns to glue during cooking, which is the difference between grains that separate and a solid paste.

Swirl the rice in a bowl of cold water with your hand, pour off the cloudy water, and repeat. Four or five changes is usually enough. The water never goes fully clear and it does not need to.

How to Keep Sticky Rice From Drying Out

It goes hard in the fridge, faster than regular rice. Two things help.

Straight after cooking, move it to a covered container or a cloth-lined basket while it is still hot. Steam trapped in the container keeps the surface soft. Rice left uncovered on a plate is stiff within twenty minutes.

To bring cold rice back, sprinkle a little water over it and steam it for five minutes, or microwave it under a damp paper towel. It returns almost completely. Reheating dry, with no added moisture, does not work.

What to Serve It With

Sticky rice is eaten with your hands. Pinch off a small piece, roll it into a ball against your fingers, and use it to pick up whatever is on the plate.

It goes with grilled meat, larb, som tam, and anything with a sauce worth mopping. For mango sticky rice, stir warm coconut milk with sugar and a pinch of salt into the finished rice and let it sit fifteen minutes before serving.