The easiest way to make rice that I picked up recently and has been a game changer.

Growing up, my mom made rice in a pressure cooker. Due to a variety of reasons and experiences that both my mom and I had, I don't think pressure cooker is a great way to make rice. It is very easy to mess up and make the rice too mushy or hard and borderline uncooked. Sometimes the rice would even be scorched and stick to the bottom.

The other common way to make rice was to simply boil the rice like how you boil an egg and just drain the water off. This would be foolproof but would end up in having one more dish to wash (colander or strainer).

This new method of mine is actually from the book 'Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking'. It's quite simple and results in rice that's exactly the way I like.

1. Put however much rice you want into a pot. Wash it a few times.
2. Fill it with just enough water so that your first crease in your index finger will be submerged (distal interphalangeal crease).
3. Keep the stove at max heat and wait until the water begins to boil.
4. Keep the stove to the least heat level, put a lid on and set a timer for about 15 mins.
5. Take it off the stove, fluff the rice and if you notice some water still left at the bottom, just keep it aside for some more time. The rice will absorb the water.
6. You now have rice cooked to perfection.

What I like about this is that I don't have to constantly check if it's done or count the number of whistles. I can just set a timer on my watch and come back later.

I'm not saying this is a very novel method; it is just new for me. This finger trick has been used by women in families for ages but the book actually goes into the science behind why that works, and why rice:water ratio doesn't scale up in bulk quantities.

Edit: for the people saying 'rice cookers exist', I get it. It may be a common thing in the West but as an Indian, I have never seen it in any Indian kitchen I've been to. It is not at all common in Asia to have one.