Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Foolproof Brown Rice

In my days of more leisurely cooking, I subscribed to Cook's Illustrated--perhaps the best cooking magazine out there. It often had recipes for really great ordinary things in it like this rice recipe (along with very exotic and time-consuming dishes like Chicken Biryani). This is now the only way I cook brown rice (and I never cook white rice). This rice is not mushy, very nutty in flavor, and freezes great! (With some rice in the freezer, you really can whip up a stir fry in no time or pull out a can of beans and have beans and rice in a jiffy).

Recipe from Cook's Illustrated #68 (May-June, 2004)

1 1/2 cups long-, medium-, or short-grain brown rice
2 1/3 cups water
2 teaspoons unsalted butter or vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees. Spread rice in an 8-inch square glass baking dish*.
2. Bring water and butter or oil to boil, covered, in medium saucepan over high heat; once boiling, immediately stir in salt and pour water over rice. Cover baking dish tightly with doubled layer of foil. Bake rice 1 hour, until tender.
3. Remove baking dish from oven and uncover. Fluff rice with dinner fork, then cover dish with clean kitchen towel; let stand 5 minutes. Uncover and let rice stand 5 minutes longer; serve immediately.

Serves 4 to 6 (to double, use 13x9-inch pan; cooking time remains the same)

*may use 8-inch ceramic dish with lid instead of glass pan.

3 comments:

Jill said...

We use a lot of brown rice, also. I've never tried baking it. I'll have to give it a try. Can't be any harder that cooking it on the stove.

I'll be poking around on your blog because I can already tell I'm going to like it. Thanks.

Jill

Amanda said...

Thanks for this! My brown rice always turned out crappy, but this worked like a charm!

Betsy said...

I'll be posting another way to cook brown rice--like pasta, with lots and lots of boiling water and then the rice is simply strained when it's done to your liking. It's never mushy because you're not expecting it to soak up all the water. Glad the baking is working--I really like the texture of the baked version.