You don’t need a rice cooker. The secret is to bake the rice. Not boil the rice. Just follow these tips from my favorite source, Sally Schneider’s book, A New Way to Cook. I made just two variations on her recipe. For the sake of getting more iron and nutrients in your rice, use beef broth, and, you you can use any rice, but Brown Basmati Rice
is more nutritious, with a sweet, nuttier flavor.
- 1 1/2 teaspoons light olive oil or unsalted butter
- 1 cup brown basmati rice*
- 2 cups boiling broth
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- A heavy oven-proof saucepan and oven-proof matching lid
- Preheat over to 400 degrees.
- In a saucepan, heat the oil over moderate heat until hot.
- Add the rice, only, and cook, stirring constantly, until you can smell the rice and it’s covered with oil. (It smells amazingly good.)
- Stir in the boiling water and salt.
- Cover the pan, transfer to the oven and bake for 30 minutes, or until the rice is tender and the liquid has evaporated.
*You can substitute any rice. Just follow the proportions of liquid to water on the package. Saute the rice and bake in the oven for the same time it tells you to boil the rice.
I need to remember this! We love rice at our house. Always good when I can cook in oven or stove top. Rice cooker is a power sucker.
Living off grid,
janet
This sounds good, Susie…and easy! I hate my rice cooker. It never cooks the rice just right. I’ll mark this one down to try.
I love rice, but oh how I wish I could make it taste like it does at the Chinese food place. Theirs is just so moist and fluffy! I’ll have to try this out.
Wow, I LURVE my rice cooker and use it all the time. That is what the Chinese do btw. They don’t cook rice well if there’s not enough water, eclectic, could that be it? I always add more water than the instructions say. I like just pressing a button and presto, perfect rice every time 🙂 How can an oven at 400 be less of a power sucker? Unless you happen to be baking other things at the same time I suppose. Well here I am being argumentative in Susie’s blog once again, hehe.
rice is our stale here and the boys love bashmati rice. they like topping their rice with butter sometimes. Thanks for this great recipe.
Oh geesh, wifemothermaniac you do bring up a good point. But the rice is sooooo good that way. I triple the recipe and freeze the leftovers — does that help?
Basmati rice is the best.