Rinsing the dry grains of rice in cool water helps rinse away any sort of debris that might be in your rice and, most importantly, it also rinses away any excess starch that coat the rice grains. Rinsing away this starch is how you end up with fluffy rice. Not rinsing the rice will result with gummy rice. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eEven for sushi rice, you will want to still rinse the rice. And then soak the dried sushi rice for 30 minutes in cold water.