You Do Not Actually Have To Rinse Your Rice
Rinsing your rice does not change how it turns out. Somebody measured.
The claim you have heard is that rinsing washes surface starch off the grain, and that surface starch is what makes rice clump. It is in cookbooks. It is on packaging. It was on this website, stated with total confidence, until we checked.
In 2019 a team washed three types of rice zero, three, and ten times, cooked them, and measured. Hardness and stickiness did not differ significantly. Ten washes. No measurable change in texture.
Stickiness was never about dust on the outside. It comes from starch leaching out of the inside while the rice cooks, and the researchers found the leached material is chemically different from whatever clings to a raw grain. Washing barely touched it. Variety mattered enormously more.
So should you stop? No. There are still good reasons: rinsing removes milling debris, dust and talc, and rinsing with plenty of cooking water measurably reduces arsenic. That second one is a far better argument than texture ever was, and we have filed it separately.
Texture just is not one of the reasons. It never was.
Obligatory caveat: three varieties, one supplier. Somebody should run this again with twenty. Until they do, this is the best evidence there is, and it says your rinsing ritual is doing something other than what you think it is doing.