Sticky Rice (ข้าวเหนียว)

Glutinous rice also called sticky rice, sweet rice, waxy rice, botan rice, biroin chal, mochi rice, and pearl rice is a type of short-grained that is especially sticky when cooked. Khao niao ข้าวเหนียว is how Thai people call sticky rice. Sticky rice is the main side dish for Northeastern (Esan อีสาน) part of Thailand because the people in this part of country normally eat sticky with other dishes for every meal. But for people from other regions, they normally eat sticky rice with  specific dishes and most dishes are Northeastern food; for example Papaya salad(Som Tam ส้มตำ) Labb (ลาบ) Thai BBQ chicken (ไก่ย่าง).

In Bangkok, Thailand, people normally don't make sticky rice by themselves since sticky rice can be bought cheaply from cart food or normal Esan food place and sticky rice take longer to be cooked compare to regular steamed rice.

The traditional way to cook sticky rice is using a bamboo steamer but for people who just want to make a small amount and don't make it often buying the bamboo steamer and use it few times might not be the right choice. Actually, sticky rice is pretty simple to cook but one thing that you have to keep in mind is raw sticky rice need to be soaked in the water at least one hour. It's perfectly fine to soak it over night and after that you can just use any kind of steamer to cook it. How long does it take to cook the sticky rice? The answer to this question is depending on how soft you like it because the longer you cook the softer you get. And the bigger portion also take longer.