I bought two different bags of "heirloom" rice yesterday and I have a
few questions about these and cooking rice in general. We have a
purpose-built rice cooker, given to us by Chinese friends - these (the
cookers, not the friends) are inexpensive, widely available, and highly
recommended - makes cooking rice a no-brainer.

Rice #1 is "Heirloom Bhutan Red Rice" made by Lotus Foods,. product of
Bhutan. The directions call for 1 cup of rice, 1-1/2 cups of water, and
a pinch of salt, and tell you that the yield for 1 cup of rice cooked
this way will be 3 cups. My wife misread the directions and used 3 cups
of water, no salt, and it came out fine. It tasted like, well, rice,
which is to say it didn't taste like much - not bad, not good, not tons
of flavor but I had a couple of helpings so I guess I liked how it
tasted. (The rest of dinner was sautéed mixed greens with lots of
garlic and pan-seared sea scallops - yummy meal.)

So that begs the question - what if she'd used 1-1/2 cups of water
instead of 3? The rice cooker seems to know when all the water is
absorbed, and since this rice _could_ absorb 3 cups of water to 1 cup of
rice, _should_ that be the way you cook it?

Rice #2, as yet untried, is "Organic Khao Deng Ruby Red Rice (Heirloom
Grain)" by a company called Alter Eco (cute). It's from Thailand. Its
directions call for 1 cup of rice, 2-1/2 cups of water, no mention of
salt, and promise a yield of "4 servings," whatever a serving may be.

Please enlighten me - are there formulas for how much water goes with
how much rice, different formulas for brown rice, regular white rice,
other varieties - we seem to like Sushi Rice in our house. How much is
personal preference, what's the difference when you use more water with
the same amount of rice, and how is any/all of this different with a pot
on the stove versus a rice cooker? I guess the most important question
is what changes when you use more or less water and cook until it's all
absorbed.

Rice wasn't a food I grew up with, save take-out Chinese every now and
then, and it's not a food we eat a lot of although we like it, so I'm
trying to learn a bit more about it.

Many thanks in advance.

-S-