Washing rice

All the recipes I have ever come across say to wash rice in a bowl and then pour the water out while keeping the rice in (with hands/fingers blocking the rice from falling out), then repeat the process a couple more times until the water becomes clear. I tried washing the rice in a colander/sieve and it is a whole lot easier, faster, and convenient and I would have thought that someone would have already figured this out by now so that it would become common knowledge and written in the recipes for making rice. So maybe is there some reason that it would not be desirable that I am unaware of and shouldn't do it that way?

I was taught that rice needed to be washed gently – so that if you press them against the metal sieve, the rice grains could be broken. (I wash rice in a bowl/rice cooker then drain over a sieve, though, because some grains spill out from between my fingers/over my hand!)

Japanese people don't "wash" their rice, they polish it.

The Japanese term for washing rice is kome-o-togu, meaning to polish the rice (togu = Œ¤‚® = polish).
They don't just rinse the talc off the surface, they remove a little bit of outer-most layer of rice.

This is best done with rice in water by vigorously massaging the rice grains against each other, using hand. My mother does this in a separate stainless steel bowl, so that non-stick coating inside of rice cooker pot is not damaged.

do not let uncle roger know that you want to use colander:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53me-ICi_f8

There are soooo many ways people recommend you to polish Japanese rice, and using a colander/sieve is not one of them. But if you ask me, it doesn't really make that much difference unless the rice is extremely good or extremely bad.

washing the rice in a colander/sieve
To me it basically just running water/rinsing over the rice without actually "washing/polishing" the rice.

Appreciate the responses. :)
@glimpigumpi - haha, that was a funny video!

If you watch Begin Japanology plus there is an episode on rice. On that they suggested (from memory) to soak the rice and then squeeze it into clumps in your fist, then rinse it well and let it dry for about 20 minutes. Then add 1 cup of rice to 1 1/2 cups of water, bring to boil and let it boil rapidly-ish for 3 minutes then turn it right down and keep it on the heat for 9 minutes more, all with the lid on. That's what I do when I'm using a saucepan instead of the rice cooker, it makes spectacular rice.

1. Bran covers the rice grain before milling it to become white rice grains.
It is NOT perfect in removing all traces of the bran, so some remain on the surface and in grooves of the white rice grains.

The technique of removing the residue gets rid of the off-flavor that would affect the taste of white rice.

https://www.ricemile.jp/star/wash/

Modern no-wash rice is milled to the point where you don't need to rinse for average rice taste, which for many foreigners is fine. But, there still some residue and you can rinse that away.

Either way...

2. You are also ADDING water to the grains.
The first couple of steps is to quickly rinse with water and drain to get rid of as much loose bran as possible. After that, you're going after what's left while hydrating the grains.

If you simply dump a cup of rice from the bag into the cooker and start it, it won't taste as good because the grains haven't had time to absorb the needed amount of water to cook right.

3. A coriander can do for the rinsing, unknown what it'll do to the integrity of the grain itself. If you break it, it doesn't mean the rice is "bad". It merely means you've got Thai "broken rice"-like grains, but for achieving Japanese style rice with intact grains, it's not ideal.

It can still taste great, but the texture will differ.

Washing of rice is a necessary part of rice cooking. If you don't wash it, rice will be tacky