Seasoned rice

White rice is great.  I grew up eating it.  I still love it.

For health reasons we switched to brown rice.  I find it needs help.  In fact, with a few minutes extra work and a handful of ingredients, brown rice is delicious.  Adding butter surely reduces the net health benefit, but I find I eat less rice overall when I prepare it this way.

Still, only white rice will do when we eat Asian food.

Ingredients

I prefer to measure my rice and water with a scale.  I do this because we haven’t settled on a brand of brown rice.  Switching brands every few weeks means finding a new water-to-rice ratio.  It’s easier for me to find a good ratio if I use a scale and scribble some notes.

The best brown rice I’ve cooked was from grains sold by a Japanese company.  That rice cooked well at a 2-to-1 water to rice ratio.  But that bag we bought in the South Bay Kam Man in Boston.  So for now I’m trying to find something we like in Worcester’s Mekong Market.  The current bag of rice cooks okay at 2.25-to-1 and probably needs more water.

The salt and sugar ratios are based on how much water cooked rice takes on — I will find the reference and link it here — and some equilibrium brine ratios from Modernist Cuisine.  If you haven’t heard of equilibrium brines, I’m writing something up on those.

  • X grams dried brown rice
  • W grams water
  • 1.48 * X * 1.0% grams salt
  • 1.48 * X * 0.4% grams sugar
  • Butter, to “taste” and for mouthfeel
  • Handful fresh parsley, finely chopped

Procedure

  1. Add rice, water, salt, and sugar to rice cooker. Cook.
  2. After rice is cooked, stir in butter and parsley.
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