More True Confessions

Almost a year ago, I made some soul-baring confessions. Pretty deep stuff. I thought maybe it was time to open up a little more and reveal yet another shocking truth. Are you ready? You might want to sit down.

I can’t cook rice.


There. I said it. Whew! I hope you still follow my blog in spite of it!

It’s really the truth. I stink at making rice: it’s either sticky or crunchy. Or worse, burned! I even bought a really cool microwave rice cooker from Tupperware that actually works great and turns out perfect rice (no thanks to me!). The problem is that I can’t use anything but straight water to cook the rice in, and I prefer to cook my rice in broth so that it actually has a little flavor. I’d try an electric rice cooker, but I really don’t need one more appliance in my teeny tiny kitchen.

On top of that, I mostly cook brown rice because it’s significantly healthier than white, but it’s a little more complicated than white, too. But that’s coming from me, who struggles with any kind of rice no matter what, so you might want to take that with a grain of rice. I mean salt.

Rice pilaf, however, is another story. Rice pilaf I can do. I’m not sure why, but I’m guessing it’s because the rice is typically browned before cooking in water. I’m not sure how that helps, though: perhaps the little bit of pre-cooking helps it to continue cooking more evenly? I’m not a scientist, so maybe somebody can explain this phenomenon to me. Whatever makes it work, I’m not complaining. If that means rice pilaf is the only way we eat rice for the rest of our lives, I’m cool with that. It’s pretty tasty, after all.

Even he thinks so! He loves rice pilaf!

So here it is… perfectly cooked rice every time. Or at least almost every time.

Perfect Rice Pilaf
1 TBSP olive oil
2 TBSP chopped spring onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup brown rice
2 1/4 cups chicken broth

Heat the oil in a pan over med-high heat. Add the onion and garlic, stirring and sauteing for 30 seconds to a minute. Add rice, cooking and stirring until lightly browned (yeah, I know it’s already brown…). Add water; bring to a boil; then reduce heat and simmer about 40 minutes or until rice is softened.

I won’t lie (in the spirit of true confession): brown rice is not exactly QUICK. It takes white rice a long time to cook, and brown rice takes even longer. There’s really no good short-cut, either, to be honest. I have used pre-cooked rice and simply sauteed it in olive oil with seasonings, which makes a fair facsimile.

It is the EASY-est way I’ve found to cook rice, though. OK, I suppose the boil-in-bags are easier, and I do make use of those on occasion, but I’m always suspicious of how much nutrition has been stripped from them.

It’s CHEAP, especially if you use homemade chicken broth and plain old brown rice.

If you’re using brown rice, it’s very HEALTHY. The World’s Healthiest Foods website says this: The complete milling and polishing that converts brown rice into white rice destroys 67% of the vitamin B3, 80% of the vitamin B1, 90% of the vitamin B6, half of the manganese, half of the phosphorus, 60% of the iron, and all of the dietary fiber and essential fatty acids. By law in the United States, fully milled and polished white rice must be “enriched” with vitamins B1, B3, and iron. But the form of these nutrients when added back into the processed rice is not the same as in the original unprocessed version, and at least 11 lost nutrients are not replaced in any form even with rice “enrichment.”


I would highly recommend everyone to switch to brown rice from white, for those very reasons. Be prepared, though, if you’re not used to it, it’s different in several ways:


-It has more flavor.
-It has a different texture, being somewhat chewier than white rice, which is very soft.
-It definitely takes longer to cook.