Uncooked to Cooked Rice Calculator

Dry cups = cooked cups ÷ 3 · Dry grams = dry cups × 198 · Water cups = dry cups × liquid ratio · Water millilitres = water cups × 236.5882365

cooked cups

The volume of cooked rice you want

3

The volume dry rice gains when it cooks — one cup dry becomes three cups cooked

198

Grams in one cup of dry long-grain rice

liquid ratio

Parts of liquid per part of dry rice by volume: 2 for long-grain white, 2¼ for brown, 4 for arborio

158

Grams in one cup of cooked rice, from USDA FoodData Central

Use it when the meal is planned in cooked portions — four people, a cup each — and the bag of rice is measured in cups of dry grain. The reverse question works the same way: if you have two cups of dry rice, three times that is six cups cooked, and the chart tells you the water and the time for whichever rice it is. The liquid column is the one to read carefully, because arborio wants twice the water of long-grain white and cooks for twice as long.

1. Four cups of cooked long-grain white rice

   1. Dry rice triples in volume, so 4 cups cooked ÷ 3 = 1.33 cups dry
   2. In grams: 1.33 × 198 = 264 g of dry rice
   3. The finished rice weighs more than it did dry: 4 × 158 = 632 g
   4. Long-grain white takes two parts liquid to one part rice: 1.33 × 2 = 2.67 cups of water
   5. That water in millilitres: 2.67 × 236.588 = 631 ml — and bring it to a boil, then simmer for 15 to 18 minutes

   The three numbers do not balance the way you might expect: 264 g of dry rice plus 631 g of water is 895 g, but the cooked rice weighs 632 g. The rest is water that boiled off as steam. Rice absorbs roughly its own weight in water and loses the rest.

2. Six cups of cooked brown rice

   1. 6 cups cooked ÷ 3 = 2 cups dry — the round number the tripling rule was made for
   2. 2 × 198 = 396 g of dry brown rice
   3. Cooked weight: 6 × 158 = 948 g
   4. Brown rice needs more liquid than white: 2 × 2¼ = 4.5 cups
   5. 4.5 × 236.588 = 1065 ml, and a much longer simmer — 40 to 45 minutes instead of 15 to 18

   Same dry weight of rice, same finished volume, but half again as much water and two and a half times the cooking time, because the bran layer is still on the grain and slows the water down.

The tripling rule is an average, and it is the average for rice cooked in about twice its volume of water. Arborio wants four parts liquid to one and wild rice wants three, so both finish larger than three times their dry volume, and this page still reports three. That is a deliberate approximation rather than a mistake: no published source gives a yield figure for those two, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. Two published sources also disagree about how much a cup of cooked rice weighs — USA Rice states both that one cup of cooked rice is about eight ounces and that a pound of dry rice yields a little over two pounds cooked, and those two statements cannot both be true; this page uses USDA FoodData Central's 158 grams per cup, which is the figure consistent with the tripling rule and with a weight roughly doubling. Rice weights from nutrition databases will read closer to 185 grams per dry cup, because that is a labelling convention rather than a measurement, about 7% below the 198 used here. Finally, every time here is for rice simmered in a covered pot on a stove; a rice cooker, a pressure cooker and an oven all take different times.

How much dry rice makes four cups of cooked rice?

One and a third cups, or 264 grams, with two and two-thirds cups of water. Cooked rice is about three times the volume of the dry rice it came from, so the dry amount is always the cooked volume divided by three. Four cups is a reasonable portion for four people as a side dish; as the main element of a rice bowl it would serve two or three.

What is the right rice to water ratio?

Two to one for long-grain white, jasmine and basmati; one and a half to one for medium-grain white; one and a quarter to one for short-grain white; two and a quarter to one for brown, parboiled and parboiled brown; four to one for arborio; three to one for wild rice. Those ratios are by volume, so a cup of rice takes two cups of water — the same proportions hold whether you are cooking one cup or six.

Why does this page say a pound of dry rice yields less than the bag says?

Because the two figures come from different sources and one of them is inconsistent. USA Rice says a cup of cooked rice weighs about eight ounces (227 g) and also that a pound of dry rice yields a little over two pounds cooked. Take 198 grams of dry rice per cup, triple the volume, and those two statements disagree. This page uses USDA's 158 grams per cup of cooked rice, which satisfies both the tripling and the "a little over two pounds" claim at the same time.

How much does one cup of dry rice weigh?

198 grams for long-grain white rice, which is about seven ounces — the figure USA Rice prints and the one King Arthur's weight chart agrees with at half a cup. Nutrition labels often imply about 185 grams per cup, about 7% less, because those are labelling conventions rather than measurements of a cup someone filled. The 198 figure is the one used for every rice type here, since the chart gives volumes rather than weights.

Does the cooking time change with how much rice I cook?

Barely, and this page treats it as not changing at all. Time is a property of the grain: long-grain white is 15 to 18 minutes whether you cook half a cup or five cups, brown rice is 40 to 45, arborio 20 to 30 and wild rice 40 to 50. What does change with quantity is how long the pot takes to come back to a boil, which is a minute or two at most on a normal hob.

• How To Cook Rice — USA Rice Federation
• FoodData Central — search for cooked long-grain white rice — US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service