How to Make Brown Rice

Brown rice is such a basic, versatile and nourishing food, that once you learn to cook it, you can make wholesome meals by simply adding just about anything to it. Beans, salads, sauteed vegetables, nuts, dried fruit, meats, chicken, fish... The possibilities are endless, and so will be your health and that of your family. A note of caution: most supermarket brown rice is colored white rice. Instead, head for the health food store bulk bins, where it will be cheaper, fresher, and of much better quality and variety, and pick your favorite brown rice: short, medium, long grain, or the fragrant brown Basmati rice.

Rinse 1 cup of rice in a bowl/pan with water, and pass it through a strainer.Put it in a pot with fresh, filtered water. The ratio for rice is always 2 to 1 (2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice). If you have enough time, let it sit, covered, for as much as 8 hours or overnight. This soaking will not only soften the rice, but it will make it more digestible as well. Especially for someone that is not used to eating brown rice, it will make it taste and feel ''lighter''. When you are ready to cook it, put a stamp-size piece of seaweed such as wakame or kombu, to add minerals to your rice- it will not add taste to it, no worries! You can also add salt and/or olive oil or butter to it. I add salt because I love it.

Bring to a boil, then turn fire to low and simmer for 1 hour. This is how the rice looks like when cooked, with the little seaweed in the middle. You can eat the seaweed as well if you wish, or compost it. If you don't have 1 hour to cook rice before dinner, you can cook it in the morning, or better yet, do what my mom used to do with our family, and now I do with mine: cook it for 1/2 hour in the morning, then finish cooking it right before dinner- that way it will be nice and hot.