Alton Brown's Trick for Making Perfect Brown Rice Every Single Time

It makes the best brown rice you’ve ever tasted—and it’s so easy.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s always a good time for rice. It shows up in my family meal plan several times a week. I’ll cook a batch of long grain rice and revive it in the microwave for a few meals until I toss whatever’s left into fridge-purging fried rice. Other weeks, it might be a pot of sticky rice for sushi bowls that gets turned into crispy sticky rice cakes for lunch the next day.

Despite my well-known affection for rice, I rarely make brown rice. Mostly, it’s because it's harder to cook than other varieties. My experiences with brown rice have tended toward a baffling combination of crunchy and soggy. I’ve been interested in trying the more nutrient-dense, whole-grain rice again, so when I saw Alton Brown’s ingenious trick for making perfect brown rice, I took it as a sign to do just that.

Leave it to Alton Brown to come up with a trick for making brown rice with a lovely soft and fluffy texture and just a little bit of chew. In one simple recipe, he turns what I thought I knew about rice cooking on its head. Rather than worrying over a pot of rice on the stove, Brown says to cook it in the oven and you’ll never look back.

How To Cook Brown Rice in the Oven

This is the ideal method for cooking brown rice, especially if you don’t own a rice cooker.

Preheat the oven to 375°F and then bring 2 1/2 cups of water, a tablespoon of butter or oil, and a teaspoon of kosher salt to a boil. Meanwhile, pour 1 1/2 cups of brown rice into an eight-inch square casserole dish. When the water mixture comes to a boil, pour it over the rice and cover it with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Then just pop it in the oven and set a timer for one hour.

When you pull back the foil on your dish of rice (carefully, don’t burn yourself on the steam!), you’ll be rewarded with a bed of perfectly cooked grains. All you have to do is fluff with a fork and serve.

You Can’t Mess Up This Method

I’ve admitted to not being the best brown rice cooker, so you know you can trust me when I say this method is nearly foolproof, or at the very least forgiving.

Rather than the short or medium-grain rice that Brown notes in his recipe, I used what I had on hand—long-grain brown rice—and it still worked. Rather than a square eight-inch casserole dish, I used a 10x8-inch one with no noticeable difference. What I’m saying is... I subconsciously tried to botch this method and I still couldn’t mess it up.

Tips for Making Brown Rice in the Oven

• Add the flavors you love. Use chicken or vegetable stock instead of water to flavor the rice as it cooks, or add herbs and spices to change the flavor profile completely.

• This recipe makes about three cups of cooked rice. If you don’t need it all at once, consider freezing it to use later.

• If you want the rice to have a nutty flavor, try toasting it in a pan with some olive oil before moving forward with the rest of the recipe.

Read the original article on Simply Recipes.