Cooking times

Q. Are the cooking times indicated on the labels correct?

A. The cooking times indicated on the labels are boiling times in salted water. However, when cooking a risotto, you must keep in mind that the fats contained in the broth slow down the absorption of the liquid in the grain and therefore it always takes 4-5 minutes more.

Q. What are the correct cooking times for the various types of rice?

A. Boiling times. 11-13 minutes for small-grain rice (Balilla, Originario), 13-14 minutes for medium-grain rice (Sant’Andrea, Ribe) 16-17 minutes for large-grain rice (Arborio, Carnaroli, Baldo). If you are making a risotto, calculate 3 to 5 minutes more, as explained above.

Q. Why does brown rice take so long to cook?

A. In fact, we are talking about 40-45 minutes of cooking (boiling in salted water). Brown rice is rice that has undergone only one processing (husking, i.e. the removal of the skin). The rice grain is made up of many layers, more or less hard, and one of these is made up of the husks that cover the chaff (i.e. the whole layer, which contains oil, mineral salts, vitamins) which is a very hard layer. Therefore the water (even worse the broth because it contains fats that slow down the cooking) takes longer to "soften this layer and penetrate inside the grain.