This is Alton Brown's recipe for Baked Brown Rice. Brown rice is so hard to cook without it burning or turning out mushy... or both somehow. :| But this recipe is a life saver! It's easy, tasty, nutritious and fool-proof!

It's so good it can be eaten by itself. Or it's a great base for any recipe requiring rice.

Baked Brown Rice

Ingredients

* 1 1/2 cups brown rice, medium or short grain (I use long grain. It's fine.)
* 2 1/2 cups water
* 1 tablespoon unsalted butter (olive oil works great.)
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Place the rice into an 8-inch square glass baking dish.

Bring the water, butter, and salt just to a boil in a kettle or covered saucepan. Once the water boils, pour it over the rice, stir to combine, and cover the dish tightly with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, remove cover and fluff the rice with a fork. Serve immediately.

The original recipe is at the Food Network website.

If anyone has any good recipes to use with this please post them!

Thank you! I just bought a box of brown rice, and had no idea it was hard to cook, so I will definitely try this!

This sounds awesome- I always get mush!

Is there a difference in cooking white rice as to brown rice?

Yeah, beerab. I've been making this recipe for over a year now though and it's been perfect every time. I hope you enjoy it. We never even have white rice anymore.

You do have to cook white rice and brown rice differently momto3kitties, but it's been a while since I made white rice so I can't remember how I did it. haha But it's much easier. Try just following the recipe on the package for white rice. Or see if Alton Brown has a white rice recipe. I'm sure he does. (No. I don't work for him, I just think he's great. ^_^)

I DO know that brown rice has to cook longer. That's why it's so easy to mess up. The reason Alton's recipe works is because you're hitting it with a high yet steady and EVEN (thanks to the oven) heat over a long period of time.

Awesome! Thanks so much! P.S. Is the meaning for your user name 'metal chick' because you like that type of music?

I cook my brown rice in a rice cooker - it always turns out pretty good. Sometimes it is a little on the harder side. But never burnt or mushy!

I still like white rice better, lol.

I do
1 cup brown rice
2 cups and a bit water
1 tbsp oil
mix it up
turn my rice cooker on and walk away, lol

Found something else to use the brown rice for. Rice pudding!

I found this Tyler Florence recipe at the Food Network website. I alter it a little. I use brown rice instead of white, light vanilla soymilk, half the sugar, half the butter, no lemon zest, I put all the cinnamon in at once, and I up the raisins to 1 cup.

Much healthier than most rice puddings, but it tastes awesome. I think I'm going to try brown sugar instead of white next time. Oh, and I prefer it cold.

And yes, I love Metal. \m/ I couldn't think of a better screen name. haha

Tyler Florence's Rockin' Rice Pudding (unaltered)

Ingredients

* 3 cups white rice, cooked
* 3 cups milk
* 2/3 cup sugar
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 1/2 cup raisins
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
* Zest of 1 lemon, grated
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon, divided

Directions

Combine cooked rice, milk, sugar and butter in a medium saucepan. Add raisins and vanilla. Cook for 25 minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed. Mix in lemon zest and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Spoon pudding into a serving dish and dust with remaining cinnamon. May serve chilled or at room temperature.

One of my feel good foods is just rice, almond milk and cinnamon. Sometimes I add raisins but I usually just keep it simple.

I cook brown rice the same as white rice and it comes out really good - twice the amount of water for one amount of rice (2 cups for one cup, etc.). I boil the water, add the rice, cover and it's done after about 20 mintutes. I taste to make sure but a good sign is that all the water has disappeared.

I love Alton's method, it turns out consistently. The regular instructions on my bag of brown rice calls for 40 minutes of cooking.

We made this for dinner last night. After torturing our digestive systems with Taco Bell the night before, my boyfriend and I needed nutrition! It's super easy, tasty and it has a really mild flavor. Perfect for a tore up stomach!

On a regular night some cayenne would probably be a good addition. I say the carrots are optional because I don't think they effect the "Sweet and Sour flavor". You can take them or leave them and add other veggies you have lying around if you want to. Mushrooms, bean sprouts and water chestnuts are all common ideas.

I'm not a calorie counter, so I don't have that info. I'm not sure of the portions either. We ate a lot and there is still a lot left over. I was full on one bowl but my bf ate 3 bowls! haha

Oh, and the cool thing about this is that the rice, sauce, tofu and veggies can all be prepared separately earlier, refrigerated, then cooked together later on. Also, if you chop the veggies somewhat large they're easy to eat with chopsticks which is fun and it kind of forces you to eat slower.

Sweet and Sour Tofu

1 recipe Baked Brown Rice
1 lb Extra firm tofu
olive oil for sauteing

Vegetables:
1 20 oz can chunk pineapple (drained and juice reserved)
1 cp chopped Red bell pepper
1 cp chopped onion
1 cp chopped celery
1 cp chopped carrots (optional)

Sauce:
1 cp pineapple juice (reserved from can)
2 tbs soy sauce
3 tbs brown sugar
2 tbs apple cider vinegar
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp white pepper

=====Preperation==============
Cook Rice and set aside.
Mix sauce.
Drain and cube tofu. Add enough sauce to tofu to saturate. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Cube all vegetables and sprinkle with ginger. Refrigerate until ready to use.

=====Cooking=================
Brown tofu in olive oil. Remove from pan.
Saute vegetables until soft.
Pour remaining sauce into pan over vegetables. Return tofu to pan. Add rice. Heat until warm.

OH wow, that baked rice sounds good. And helpful! I always seem to run out of stovetop space.

My favorite way to eat rice is to have roasted vegetables on top (sauteed are nice also) with aged vinegar drizzled all over. Aged balsamic or aged sherry are both great. (If you aren't a vinegar person - it gets sweeter when it's aged, and loses the tartness of vinegar) If you don't like vinegar, teriyaki or soy sauce is also tasty. It's really simple, but really good.

Oooh. I've done that with soy sauce, teriyaki, and even fish sauce but it's never crossed my mind to use balsamic vinegar for that and I love it. I'm totally going to give that a try.

Great idea!