Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Brown rice tips - add 1/4 tsp baking soda

Don't worry, I have no intention of turning this into a cooking blog, but here's another thing I've learned:

I've always had problems cooking brown rice. It never cooks in the time I think it should. I've let it cook for 2 hours and it was still crunchy. Yesterday, my sister and I were talking about beans and she mentioned that you need to add 1/4 tsp baking soda to the water when soaking beans if you have hard water, otherwise the beans don't soften correctly. I decided to try it with the brown rice. I put in 3 c water to 1 c rice and 1/4 tsp baking soda. The rice was tender in 45 minutes. I was very happy.

The one unknown in the whole process is that I've gotten a new range since the last time I cooked brown rice, so it is possible it is somehow cooking different. I think I'll stick to adding baking soda though. I'm not scientific enough to cook rice for an hour to see if it come out all right without the soda.

1 comment:

Amy said...

Thanks, I was looking for some info on this. I saw baking soda mentioned on a cooking show recently to facilitate cooking. I was searching on the internet for using it on brown rice, and I found your blog article. Thanks! Have you tried any comparison tests since you wrote this?