Zoe Saldaña’s Life-Changing Secret for Cooking Rice

With awards season in full swing, Emilia Pérez has been sweeping top accolades—especially when it comes to Zoe Saldaña’s supporting performance. As the Oscars approach, the star has been on the campaign trail for the past few weeks and recently made a stop at a foodie-favorite podcast, Table Manners with Jessie & Lennie Ware.

On this episode of the show, Saldaña talks about learning how to cook from her grandmother, her favorite Dominican recipes and the one dish that she admits to being picky about. Spoiler: it’s rice, and the actor believes there is a “right” and “wrong” way to cook it. Here are the rice cooking dos and don’ts that you need to know, according to Saldaña.

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First, you need to rinse your rice before you cook it—which is also a Padma Lakshmi-approved tip. Saldaña notes that she washes her rice with water “over and over and over again.” Once rinsed, it’s time to cook the rice.

You may be making a crucial mistake if your go-to method for cooking rice is in a pot of water, per the Avatar star’s standards.

“We sauté our rice before we put the water in; we don’t just put water in a pot and then throw the rice in there,” Saldaña explains. So on high heat in a pan with olive oil—she only uses butter if she’s making milk risotto—and salt, she adds her uncooked rice and sautés it for a couple of minutes. 

“And then you add your water,” she says. “But you don’t add so much water. You add enough water that if you put a spoon or a fork or a knife, it can still stand. You don’t want pasty, sticky rice unless that’s your intention.” Once the small amount of water is poured in the pan with the rice, Saldaña will wait for the water to evaporate before covering the pan and lowering the heat.

“You’ll get that grainy, delicious rice. Every little grain is oily. It’s really good,” Saldaña says. Okay, she definitely convinced us—we need to try her rice cooking method ASAP.

Some other nostalgic rice dishes that the actor mentions loving include chicken tikka masala and coconut rice, which she mentions is her dad’s favorite. For more recipes, these rice bowls can be made with fresh or leftover rice, and they taste amazing either way.