Sourcing your rice

You can order Japanese short-grain rice from www.trf-ny.com. Get either Tsuyahime, Koshihikari, or Sasanishiki. Just use the search bar and type those words in. These strains of Japanese white rice make really good sushi and are used in the most expensive sushi restaurants. They’re more expensive than other types of rice, but meal-to-meal it’s still pretty cheap.

First Step To Cooking Rice that will make the texture feel much better

Calling this step “advanced” is a bit of a stretch, but it’s more than the bare minimum, so here we are. Before cooking your rice, wash it. This will keep your rice from getting mushy by washing off the surface starch. To do that: put rice in a strainer in a bowl, fill up the bowl with water just until it covers the rice, swoosh it around with your hand so that the water gets milky, dump out the water (but not the rice)

[Picture of water after first wash]

Repeat 3 more times. If you don’t feel like it doing that many times, do it at least once. You’ll get a lot of the outer starch off that day.

[Picture of water after fourth wash]