Kateh

The water is absorbed rather than drained, which is why it is sticky and has no tahdig.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (butter).

Ingredients

• 400 g long-grain white rice
• 600 ml water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 50 g butter, or 60 ml sunflower oil

Method

1. THE WATER IS ABSORBED RATHER THAN DRAINED, WHICH IS WHY IT IS STICKY AND HAS NO TAHDIG. Every other rice on this site's Iranian pages is parboiled in a lot of water and then drained, which rinses off the loose surface starch and is exactly why those grains end up separate. Kateh keeps that starch. The rice and a measured amount of water go in together, the water is all taken up, and nothing is poured away. The result clings, which is the point of it and not a fault to be corrected.
2. THE RATIO IS ONE AND A HALF PARTS WATER TO ONE PART RICE, BY VOLUME OR BY WEIGHT. Four hundred grams of rice to six hundred millilitres. This is the only number in the dish that matters and it is not adjustable by eye once the lid is on, because you cannot see the water. Measure it.
3. THE RICE IS RINSED BUT NOT SOAKED. Three or four changes of cold water to take off the dust, and then straight into the pan. A two-hour soak, which the drained rices need, would have the grains take up water before they ever meet the measured amount, and the ratio would then be wrong by an amount you cannot know.
4. THE BUTTER GOES IN AT THE START, NOT AT THE END. Fifty grams with the rice and the water, from cold. Its article is specific that the fat goes in during the cooking, and it is what gives this rice a denser flavour than the drained kind; stirred in afterwards it sits on the outside and tastes like buttered rice instead.
5. IT IS BOILED HARD UNTIL THE SURFACE WATER IS GONE, THEN SEALED. Bring it to the boil uncovered and let it boil until the water has dropped to the level of the rice and you can see craters forming on the surface -- about eight minutes. Then the lid, wrapped in a tea towel, and the lowest heat for twenty minutes.
6. IT TAKES HALF THE TIME OF A DRAINED RICE AND THAT IS WHY IT EXISTS. Twenty-eight minutes from cold to the table against the better part of an hour, which is why its own article calls it the simplest Iranian rice and 'everyday rice'. It belongs to the Caspian provinces, Gilan and Mazandaran.
7. A CRUST STILL FORMS, AND IT IS NOT A TAHDIG. The salt and the fat collect on the base and brown there, so there is something to scrape up. The difference is that nothing was laid down to crisp and no extra fat was poured in to crisp it -- it is a by-product rather than a construction, and it comes out in fragments rather than as a disc.
8. IT IS SERVED FROM THE POT, FLAT. Loosened with a fork and spooned out. Turning it out whole is for the constructed rices; this one is a weekday pan of rice and treating it as a centrepiece only breaks it up.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes