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Home Β» Cooking Basics Β» How to Cook Brown Rice

July 16, 2020 (last updated February 5, 2021)

How to Cook Brown Rice

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white bowl with raw brown rice on burlap mat with wood spoon

Are you terrified at the thought of cooking brown rice? I don’t blame you. So many things can go wrong. It might come out too sticky, too mushy or half cooked. If you don’t use just the right size pot, the water evaporates too quickly so you have to add more. But how much? Ack! I’ll show you how to cook brown rice without stress. Just follow me . . .

My cooking method is so easy and error-proof you’ll want to make it every day. Since I found this stress-free method for how to cook brown rice I make it more often.

For those of us who are gluten-free and eat a lot of rice, this cooking method is best. A study was done a few years ago to determine arsenic levels in rice and rice products. Arsenic is not necessarily dangerous. It is normal to have some level of arsenic in your diet. The bottom line of the study was that if you eat a lot of rice you could be ingesting more than recommended arsenic levels. The rice is rinsed before cooking and then, because it is boiled like pasta, some of the arsenic is rinsed away in the water. See this blog post for more info about expanding your gluten-free diet beyond rice.

This method for cooking brown rice will work for both short grain and long grain brown rice but not for white rice.

How to Cook Brown Rice

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown rice (short grain, long grain or basmati
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 2-3 quarts water

This method is almost exactly like cooking pasta. Boil salty water, add rice, boil, drain. You may cringe at the amount of salt used, but this is the best way to flavor the rice. It absorbs the salty water so the flavor gets inside of the rice grain. It is so much better than adding salt when it’s already cooked

Time needed:Β 50 minutes.

How to Cook Brown Rice

  1. Fill a pot with water and heat

    Use a 4 quart pot or larger. Add 3 quarts water and 1 Tbsp kosher salt and bring to a boil over high heat.

  2. Rinse the rice

    Using a mesh strainer, rinse the rice under cold water for 30 seconds.

  3. Add rice

    When the water is boiling rapidly, add the rice.

  4. Cook 30 minutes

    Set the timer to 30 minutes and go about your business. No babysitting required. No lid on the pot is needed but one will be needed later.

  5. Set the timer to 30 minutes and go about your business. No babysitting required.

  6. Drain and steam

    When the time is up, pour through a sieve or strainer to drain the water. Return the rice to the pot, cover and let sit 10 minutes. The residual heat will continue steaming the rice and finish the cooking process.

Continue to Content
white bowl with raw brown rice on burlap mat with wood spoon

How to Cook Brown Rice

Yield: 3 cups
Prep Time: 2 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Additional Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 42 minutes

This is an easy, stress-free method of cooking brown rice.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown rice (short grain, long grain or basmati)
  • 1 Tbsp kosher salt
  • 2-3 quarts water

Instructions

  1. Using a mesh strainer, rinse the rice under cold water for 30 seconds.
  2. Use a 4 quart pot. Add the water and salt and bring to a boil over high heat.
  3. When the water is boiling rapidly, add the rice. Give it a stir. Do not cover the pot.
  4. Set the timer to 30 minutes and go about your business. No babysitting required.
  5. When time is up drain the water, put the rice back in the pot and let it sit covered for 10 minutes.

Recommended Products

  • ORGANIC BROWN SHORT GRAIN RICE - Lundberg Family Farms
    ORGANIC BROWN SHORT GRAIN RICE - Lundberg Family Farms
Nutrition Information
Yield 6 Serving Size 1/2 cup cooked
Amount Per Serving Calories 114Total Fat 0gSaturated Fat 0gTrans Fat 0gUnsaturated Fat 0gCholesterol 0mgSodium 1182mgCarbohydrates 8gFiber 1gSugar 0gProtein 1g

This website is written and produced for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and the nutritional data on this site has not been evaluated or approved by a nutritionist or the Food and Drug Administration. Nutritional information is offered as a courtesy and should not be construed as a guarantee. The data is calculated using information from the Nutritionix database. Although I do my best to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures should be considered estimates only. Varying factors such as product types or brands purchased, natural fluctuations in fresh produce, and the way ingredients are processed change the effective nutritional information in any given recipe. Furthermore, different online calculators provide different results depending on their own nutrition fact sources and algorithms. To obtain the most accurate nutritional information in a given recipe, you should calculate the nutritional information with the actual ingredients used in your recipe, using your preferred nutrition calculator.

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© Janet Harlow
Cuisine: American / Category: Side Dishes
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Posted In: Cooking Basics, Side Dishes · Tagged: cooking lesson, how to, rice

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