Yesterday I heard myself saying “don’t mess with my rice” when my husband was near the stove but not cooking anything. Because to make proper “arroz soltinho”—the hallmark of great Brazilian rice—you are not supposed to touch the rice after you put it in the pot. Well, you touch it once. Once. And this is something that is quickly forgotten in a household where only 1 person grew up eating Brazilian rice, and my rice has been “ruined” on more than one occasion by overly eager family members who mixed the rice until it became “arroz papa,” which is the Brazilian expression for “mushy rice,” or rice that sticks together.
Anyway, I figured I’d explain the process here for anyone who might be interested.
Most places I’ve lived in North America, people are only familiar with rice via East Asian cuisine. And in those dishes, the rice is deliberately made to stick together, so you can easily pick it up with chopsticks, which makes sense.
In Brazil, we almost always eat rice with beans that have been cooked in water with garlic and onions (and salt), and it makes a sort of “sauce.” You want the individual rice grains to pick up this bean liquid, so it’s best to have individual grains as much as possible. And in order to do that, you can’t “mess with the rice” while it’s cooking. So here’s the recipe for some authentic Brazilian rice, if you’re ever interested in trying it out.
Final result:
Authentic Brazilian Rice Recipe
Source: I grew up in Brazil eating a lot of rice, and I still enjoy it immensely. I watched my mom and both my grandmas make rice like this, and this is how I make mine. I wrote this recipe myself because like with most food my family cooked, the “recipe” was “a bit of this, a bit of that, cook it for a little bit,” etc. Which is sort of still the way I cook, too, to be honest 
But I’ve made this enough times that the quantities are accurate. The most important thing to remember is that the ratio of water to rice is always 2 cups of water for every 1 cup of rice.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (I use canola, but yes, you can use olive oil, and it’s what most Brazilians use).
1 small onion, finely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup white long-grain rice (brown rice also works, but traditional Brazilian rice is white)
Salt to taste
2 cups water
Method
Heat the vegetable oil in a pot over medium-low heat for about 1 minute.
Add the chopped onions and garlic and fry them in the oil for about 2-3 minutes or until fragrant.
Pour in the rice and dash of salt in the pot and mix well with the garlic and onions. Let fry for about a minute or two, and then add the water.
Give the whole thing a very light stir, just to get any rice off the sides to prevent burning.
And then, for the love of everything that’s holy, leave the pot alone until all water has been boiled off. Keep a close eye on the pot so the rice doesn’t burn to the bottom when all the water is gone. How long this takes is going to depend on your stove, so I won’t give you a timeline here.
Once all water is boiled off, put a close-fitting lid on the pot and set a timer for 20 minutes. Resist the temptation to touch the rice or peak under the lid before the timer goes off. The steam created by placing the lid over the pot will finish cooking the rice.
When the timer goes off, remove the lid, and then, with a fork, “fluff up” the rice from the bottom to the top. This is less like mixing up the rice and more like folding it. The purpose of this is simply to prevent the rice that’s on the bottom from sticking to the pot.
You should now have the type of rice that Brazilians will compliment by saying, with glee, “arroz soltinho, que delicía!”
Which roughly translates to “loose rice; delicious!”
Thanks for looking and let me know if you make it and how you liked it!
Process Photos
Adding the garlic & onions
Is there a smell more delicious than garlic and onions frying in oil??
Adding the rice
