What Is Jasmine rice and How Can I Use It?

Jasmine rice rewards a little know-how: how to choose it, cook it, store it, and substitute in a pinch. Browse 8 recipes to cook with it.

Key Points

Thai long-grain aromatic rice with a floral, popcorn-like scent and soft, slightly clingy cooked grains.
Rinse well, then cook at about 1¼ cups water to 1 cup rice.
Softer and more clingy than basmati rice, which cooks up drier and separate.
Built for Southeast Asian food: coconut milk, curry, lemongrass, chili, lime.
Closest swap is plain long grain rice; you lose the aroma but keep the body.

What is jasmine rice?

Jasmine rice is a long-grain aromatic rice grown mostly in Thailand, where it is the everyday table rice. Its name comes from the floral, slightly popcorn-like smell that fills the kitchen the moment the lid comes off.

Cooked, it is soft and a little clingy. The grains hold together enough to scoop with a fork or chopsticks, but they are not heavy or gummy the way short-grain rice is. That gentle cling is exactly what you want under a saucy Thai curry.

It belongs to the same long-grain family as basmati rice, but the two behave differently on the plate, which trips up a lot of cooks.

How to Cook Jasmine Rice

Rinse it first. Swirl the rice in cool water and pour off the cloudy starch two or three times, until the water runs nearly clear. This keeps the cooked grains from clumping into a paste.

Use roughly 1¼ cups water to 1 cup rice, a touch less liquid than you would give most long-grain white rice because jasmine is softer to begin with.

Bring it to a boil, drop to a bare simmer, cover, and leave it alone for about 12 minutes. Then kill the heat and let it steam another 10 minutes before you lift the lid.

Resist stirring while it cooks. Every stir drags out starch and pushes the texture toward mush.

For weeknight Thai meals this is the rice to reach for. It soaks up coconut and chili beautifully under a Thai Chicken Curry With Pineapple, and it gives a clean, faintly sweet base to Cashew Chicken or a plate of Steak with Thai Peanut Sauce.

What It Pairs With

Jasmine rice was built for Southeast Asian food. It handles coconut milk, fish sauce, lemongrass, lime, and fresh chili without fighting them, and its soft cling means a brothy curry clings back instead of running to the edge of the plate.

It also takes well to dried fruit and warm spice, as in Jasmine Rice with Dried Fruit, where the rice's own perfume meets sweetness instead of heat.

The common mistake is treating it like basmati and giving it too much water and a hard boil. You end up with a sticky lump. Less water and a gentle simmer are the whole secret.

Substitutes

The closest swap is plain long grain rice. You lose the floral aroma, but the body and cooking method are similar, so a curry or stir-fry still works.

Basmati rice will also do, though it cooks up drier and more separate, with its own nutty scent rather than jasmine's flower-and-popcorn note. Use it when you actually want distinct grains.

For a wholegrain version, brown jasmine exists and behaves like other brown rice: more water, far longer cooking, a chewier bite. It is not a one-for-one swap mid-recipe.

Buying and Storing

Look for bags labeled Thai Hom Mali, the designation for genuine Thai jasmine, and ideally a recent crop. Fresh-season jasmine smells noticeably more fragrant than rice that has sat in a warehouse for a year.

Store uncooked jasmine rice in an airtight container somewhere cool and dark, and it keeps well for a year or more. The aroma fades over time, so buy in amounts you will actually use.

Cooked jasmine rice keeps three to four days refrigerated. Cool it quickly and chill it within an hour or two, since cooked rice left warm can grow bacteria that reheating will not fully undo.

Day-old chilled jasmine actually fries up better than fresh, so it is worth cooking extra for fried rice.