Welcome to your first day of the Spring Cooking Challenge. Day 1 was picking your cookbook. Today we start cooking. Let me know with comments and pictures how your challenge is going!
Perfect Brown Rice
2 Cups short- or medium-grain brown rice, soaked in spring water overnight if possible
4 Cups spring water
2 Pinches sea salt
Whether soaking or not, rice always needs to be washed and checked for hulls, bugs, and rocks. So to begin, examine the rice for foriegn matter and discard it. Then, in the cooking pot (preferably a heavy one), cover the rice with water. Swirl the rice and water around with your hand a few times and then pour off the water through a strainer, so as not to lose any rice. Repeat this rinsing one more time. Don’t worry if the water seems cloudy. the murkiness is the result of natural starch, and we don’t want to rinse it all away.
If soaking the rice, measure out the amount of water needed for cooking and pour it on top of the rice. let sit 3-12 hours and cook in soaking water.
If not soaking, simply add the cooking water and bring to a boil, uncovered, over medium heat. When it is boiling, add salt, reduce heat to low, place on flame deflector, cover with heavy lid, and simmer 50 minutes. Turn off heat and let rice sit 5 minutes to unstick from bottom of pot. Fluff with wooden spoon and serve.
–Here is a silly video I made about cooking the perfect pot of rice.
This recipe was printed with permission from Jessica Porter.