Pre-Soak Brown Rice so It Cooks As Quickly As White Rice
While brown rice has many health benefits and has obvious nutritional value compared to white rice, it also has one undoubtedly huge disadvantage: it takes much longer to cook. Fortunately, you can cook brown rice a lot faster if you want to prepare a little ahead of time.
All you have to do to speed up the cooking of your brown rice is to soak it the night before. We stumbled upon this helpful tip in an article by Marian Burroughs in the New York Times in 1991:
To shorten the cooking time for brown or wild rice, soak it overnight. For brown rice, the water to rice ratio is 2: 1. For wild rice, pour plenty of water a few inches above the rice. Soak the rice in a covered saucepan and refrigerate for about six hours or overnight.
As a result, the cooking time for brown or wild rice is reduced from more than 45 minutes to 20 minutes or less. Of course, you have to plan a little ahead of time, but this method has the added benefit of soaking whole grains to reduce their phytic acid , an enzyme inhibitor that interferes with the body’s absorption of minerals.
Eat Right | New York Times
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