How to Cook Brown Rice

Here’s how I cook my brown rice; I’m using Lundberg Short Grain Brown Rice from Costco.

1. Presoak the rice: put it the pot you’ll cook it in with a lot of water (measurement is unnecessary here) and let it sit for about thirty minutes to get rid of excess starch or whatnot.
2. Drain that water and then add 1.5 cups of water for every 1 cup of rice you had; e.g. ratio of 1.5:1 water to rice.
3. Put the uncovered pot on the stove and set heat to high; wait for it to boil.
4. Turn heat to low, cover pot with lid, and wait twenty minutes while it simmers.
5. Turn off the heat, keep the pot covered, and wait thirty minutes for the rice to soften up.

My rule for remember this is 10,20,30: about ten minutes to boil, twenty to simmer, and then thirty to soften. I still always forget the water/rice ratio though, which is the original impetus for this post.

Afterwards I generally throw the entire pot in the refrigerator and dole out portions over the next couple days when I want to make a meal. One particular favorite of mine is to throw a frozen Morning Star sausage patty on a bowl of rice, top that with cheese, cover the entire thing with a paper towel, and microwave for 2.5 minutes. Quickly remove when done and use a fork to mix it up while turning the bowl in your hands -- don't burn your fingers! The one thing others tend to change in this when I serve it to them is to add soy sauce as well. Yum!

I encourage you to add stuff to the rice/water mixture at the beginning (after presoaking though!) for various flavors. Something that works well is about a teaspoon of diced garlic, cayenne pepper, and a generous squirt of soy sauce or fish sauce. It’s easy to toss in other things, however, and it up with different and interesting tastes. For example, I’ve added teriyaki sauce that I had leftover in one of those tiny plastic cups you get from take-out or olive oil (probably better at the end) or different kinds of hot sauce / spice. My one recommendation would just be to keep it simple and not overload it with two many variants; I’ve made that mistake in the past.

Special thanks to Steve Pavlina’s blog entry How to Cook Brown Rice and Melissa Paul’s pre-soak suggestion.