From gum­my, sap­py rice to un­der­cooked, dry rice—we’ve all had our is­sues with cook­ing rice. Ad­mit­ted­ly, it can be tricky. The type of grain, pot and method can af­fect whether you get fluffy, per­fect­ly cooked rice or a dis­as­trous mess. Many lit­tle things con­tribute to poor­ly cooked rice. Here are a few com­mon mis­takes that you may be mak­ing and should avoid.

#1 Not Rins­ing Your Rice

Rins­ing your rice un­til the wa­ter runs clear re­moves most of the out­er starch­es from the rice. Starch­es are what pre­vent you from de­vel­op­ing light and fluffy rice. They’re the cul­prits that cause gum­my, sog­gy and slimy rice. We rec­om­mend us­ing a strain­er to wash your rice un­til the wa­ter runs clear. You will end up with more de­fined and dis­tinct rice grains. Try not to ag­gra­vate the rice af­ter, as that just de­vel­ops more starch.

#2 Con­stant­ly Stir­ring It While Cook­ing

Speak­ing of de­vel­op­ing more starch, stir­ring the rice as it cooks (de­spite how tempt­ing it may be) is an ab­solute ‘no-no’. Ag­gra­vat­ing rice in any way, ei­ther be­fore or dur­ing cook­ing, leach­es even more starch­es in­to its cook­ing liq­uid and makes it gum­my and thick—ba­si­cal­ly, every­thing you do not want your rice to be. You will know you’ve ag­gra­vat­ed the starch­es as the liq­uid the rice is sub­merged in usu­al­ly be­comes cloudy.

#3 Cook­ing It At A High Tem­per­a­ture

Cook­ing rice at a high tem­per­a­ture caus­es the rice grains to burst open. This caus­es the rice to re­lease starch (#1 and #2 go in­to de­tail about why this is a prob­lem). Al­so, the tex­ture of the rice is com­plete­ly ru­ined be­cause it ends up turn­ing in­to a mushy pota­to-like sub­stance. This is why it’s a good idea to use a rice cook­er be­cause that main­tains a con­sis­tent heat that isn’t hot enough to oblit­er­ate the rice. Even if cook­ing on a stove­top, try to main­tain a con­sis­tent sim­mer in­stead of a rolling boil for a per­fect re­sult.

#4 Treat­ing Every Type Of Rice The Same

Brown, jas­mine, bas­mati and white rice all have to be treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. Most per­sons boil them in the same amount of wa­ter for the same length of time and hope for the best. How­ev­er, fra­grant rice vari­a­tions like jas­mine should not be cooked with salt or oil as this would hin­der its flavour. Hard­er grains like bas­mati rice should be soaked pri­or to cook­ing in or­der to help them ex­pand to their full length and size. Brown or wild rice usu­al­ly takes a lot longer to cook with a rice to wa­ter ra­tio of about 1:2.5.

Re­gard­less of which type of rice you are us­ing, it’s a good idea to Google the type of rice in or­der to cook it the right way.

#5 ‘Check­ing’ On Your Rice

It may be tempt­ing but do not lift the lid of your rice pot or cook­er. There’s a rea­son you get a rice fa­cial if you lift the lid—a lot of steam and heat is re­leased if you even slight­ly lift your pot cov­er. This does not on­ly cre­ate an in­con­sis­tent cook­ing en­vi­ron­ment and mess­es up your rice to wa­ter ra­tio (re­mem­ber, steam is wa­ter) but it al­so de­stroys any chances of you end­ing up with per­fect­ly cooked rice. The rice knows what it’s do­ing so, leave it alone.

#6 Not Let­ting It Sit

Even if you’re drool­ing with hunger, you have to wait at least 10 min­utes af­ter the rice has fin­ished cook­ing be­fore eat­ing. This is be­cause im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the rice has fin­ished cook­ing, most of the mois­ture is to­wards the bot­tom, and the rice at the top is dry. Wait­ing 10 min­utes gives the mois­ture enough time to even­ly dis­trib­ute around the rice so that you have one con­sis­tent dish.