Rice is the cornerstone of every Southeast Asian meal. It’s the main dish, and the vegetables, fish and/or meat – no matter how simply or elaborately prepared – are the side dishes.

It might sound boring having rice every day (sometimes every meal), but I personally will never get tired of inhaling the gentle perfume of steamed rice escaping from my rice cooker. The collective experience and creativity of generations of rice-loving Asians has produced a long list of possibilities with this humble grain. You can get countless permutations of flavours and textures based on the method of cooking and the type of rice used.

Vegetables and fresh/cured meats can be mixed into the rice while it’s steaming (see claypot rice, here), or fried with leftover cooked rice with a splash of soy sauce (see fried rice, here). Depending on the sauces, spices and ingredients used, you can get vastly different dishes. Even the length of cooking affects the results. If you cook rice for longer in plenty of water or stock, you get a light porridge (see congee, here) that’s especially comforting after a bout of sickness or too many fry-ups.

The default rice served on most Southeast Asian tables is plain steamed long-grain rice. Even salt is not added. You can find nutty unpolished grains of brown, red or black rice, but white rice is favoured. Jasmine rice has a beautiful subtle floral scent and a soft, fluffy texture when cooked. This is my go-to rice and I can easily get through 10kg sacks of it, even as a pint-sized girl living alone. For certain dishes like nasi lemak (see here), when a lighter, drier texture is desired, I use fragrant longer-grained basmati.

Glutinous rice is, as its name suggests, sticky and wonderfully chewy when steamed. (It does not, as its name suggests, contain gluten, though.) It’s often eaten in place of regular rice in northern Thailand and Laos. In other parts of Southeast Asia, sticky rice is more commonly used in dumplings because they hold their shape well, but can also be served like a sweet dessert (see peach on sticky rice, here) with coconut milk.

All this means that you can essentially be eating rice for any dish, at any point of the meal or day – and I do, quite happily.