Is Bran Oil the Secret to Perfect Chipotle-Style Rice?

Cilantro is still the most important ingredient, but does bran oil inch you closer to the real stuff?

Have you heard of bran oil? I’ll admit that until very recently, I had not. Bran muffins, yes. Bran from Game of Thrones, him too. But bran oil? Nope.

News of this new-to-me-oil was delivered via rumor that it might be the secret to truly duping Chipotle rice at home. Like if Chipotle rice is Mary-Kate Olsen, bran oil would supposedly take your homemade rice from Elizabeth to Ashley. So I figured it was worth learning a bit more about.

What Is Bran Oil?

Bran oil is actually extracted from the outer husks of rice grains. It has a high smoke point so is often used in frying, but I was curious how it might affect the taste of rice. I usually cook mine with a pat of salted butter so I was no stranger to the benefit of adding a fat–this cleared the path in my mind for grabbing a bag of rice (long-grain American if you’re curious) to see if bran oil could get me into Chipotle territory.

How I Tested Bran Oil in Chipotle-Style Rice

There are a few recipes for Chipotle-ish rice floating around the internet. I used this recipe from  The Spruce Eats as my base and added a little razzle-dazzle from a few other sites.

Taste Test #1

For the first round, my method was simple: I combined rice, salt, water, one bay leaf, and one of three fats (butter, olive oil, bran oil), and boiled each mixture on the stovetop. Once the rice was cooked I added cilantro, lime zest, lime juice, and more salt.

And while I didn’t expect much variation between the three fat versions, it turns out there was a difference. I admit that some of this might have been human error, because even though my measurements were consistent my boiling wasn’t always and you know the moon was shifting and tides were changing and all that. Anyway, the butter tasted the least like Chipotle rice and had the softest texture. The olive oil version tasted closer but had the slightest taste of, well, olive oil. The bran oil version tasted like the olive oil one without the slightly bitter/fruity olive oil taste. Interesting but inconclusive.

Taste Test #2

With the knowledge of how each of the fats performed, I wanted to test a common step I saw in numerous recipes: toasting the rice. I personally love to toast my rice, but usually with more aromatics and spices beyond the humble bay leaf. No matter: If the internet says something is a good idea it surely must be.

I toasted my rice with a bay leaf, using olive oil in one version and bran oil in the other. I also made the bran oil version in a rice cooker to see if that made a difference. And then it was time to pick a favorite.

My Favorite: Rice Toasted in Bran Oil and Cooked in the Rice Cooker

While I think the bran oil in the rice cooker came the closest in both taste and texture, I think the version where the rice grains were toasted with bran oil was my favorite. When you’re going through oodles of rice a day, you probably don’t have time to coat, stir, and gently heat every batch, and according to the guy who made my most recent Chipotle Burrito, they do in fact just use a huge rice cooker. The olive oil still tasted good, and fairly close, but there was still that faint something extra. On the other hand, the bran oil blended in with the rice (sort of like cooking oatmeal in oat milk, ya know?).

A Final Test: A Panel of Judges (Okay, My Two Friends)

To make sure it wasn’t all in my head, I asked my two most Chipotle-loving friends to try both of the stovetop versions and tell me if they could taste any difference and whether one version tasted more like Chipotle than the other. They both said they could taste “something” in the olive oil version, and my friend Alaina thought that even though it was a stronger taste it did play nicely with the lime. The bran oil did taste the most neutral according to my team of judges, but I think I stressed them both out watching them eat the rice so closely so neither wanted to commit to one tasting more like actual Chipotle than the other. Again, inconclusive.

The Overall Winner: Bran Oil, With a Caveat

While I maintain that bran oil was the overall winner, I don’t know if it was so far ahead that I would recommend running out and grabbing some just for the rice. I’m sure there will be plenty of frying (and Chipotle-ish burrito bowls) in my future, but as I sit in my tiny apartment gazing at my large bottle of bran oil, I can’t help but do the familiar math of return on taste vs. cabinet space. That said, if you’re a Chipotle die-hard or just curious about the oil, I think it does make for a tasty, fluffy, rice that, like Chipotle’s, serves as a great canvas for stronger flavors.