Should you rinse rice before cooking it?

Rinsing removes loose surface starch that would otherwise gelatinize into a gummy coating, so for long-grain white rice, basmati, and jasmine, rinsing until the water runs mostly clear produces distinct, separate grains. Some types benefit from a brief soak as well, which basmati traditions call for. Skip rinsing when the starch is doing the work: risotto's creaminess and paella's texture depend on the surface starch of arborio, carnaroli, and bomba rice releasing into the liquid.

The arsenic question is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. Rice absorbs inorganic arsenic from soil and water more readily than other grains, and levels vary by growing region and rice type, with brown rice generally higher than white because the compounds concentrate in the bran. Rinsing thoroughly reduces it modestly, and cooking in a large excess of water, roughly six parts water to one part rice, then draining, reduces it substantially more, at some cost to nutrients. The FDA has set action levels for infant rice cereal specifically because infants eat proportionally more, and variety in grains rather than rice at every meal is the practical mitigation for adults.

One safety point that outranks all of this. Cooked rice left at room temperature can grow Bacillus cereus, a bacterium whose spores survive cooking and produce toxins that reheating does not destroy. Refrigerate rice within an hour or two of cooking, keep it no more than a day, and reheat it thoroughly once. Fried rice syndrome is the informal name for the resulting food poisoning, and it comes from the storage rather than the cooking.