Good Brown Rice Recipes
One pot brown rice and veggies is an easy, healthy all-in-one side dish with whole grains and plenty of vegetables mixed in. Goes great with all kinds of main dish meats to make dinner a breeze!
Brown rice is a staple in my house. I keep a large container in the pantry full of brown rice and always have at least one extra bag on hand at all times to add to it.
(And if you think it’s difficult or tricky or you’ve had trouble in the past, read that post I just linked to there. It tells you how to cook it perfectly every time. No guessing.)
Easy Mexican Brown Rice Recipe
If I’m feeling a bit more with it, I’ll make one pot broccoli cheese brown rice or easy cheesyzucchini brown rice . Those were invented when my kids were little ones and needed some help eating their veggies.
We’ve got onions and mushrooms that cook along with the rice. Then at the end, we add green peas and fresh spinach for some more veggie love and goodness.
Now, I’ve got those notes and tips coming up below on how to make brown rice with vegetables. Just tryin’ to be helpful.
How To Cook Brown Rice Perfectly And Zucchini And Garlic Brown Rice
If you want to jump on down to the recipe, simply scroll right on through the rest of the text. The recipe card is near the bottom of the page, above the comments section.
You could also serve this with some fresh herbs, like parsley or basil, if you want to give it an herby punch.
Leftovers will keep for 4-5 days in a covered container in the refrigerator. Reheat in small portions in the microwave until hot, about 1 minute with a stir halfway through.
Brown Rice Pilaf Recipe
So when you need a side dish to magically complete your meal - and a healthy one at that - I hope you give this brown rice and veggies recipe a try.
Brown rice: We’re using a whole grain brown rice for this recipe (the standard kind you’ll find at the store.) Just make sure you don’t have a quick cook or instant kind, as the timing will be much different.
Broth: Chicken broth is what I always have on hand, but you could use vegetable broth if you want to keep this vegetarian. I recommend low-sodium so you can control the amount of sodium in the dish.
Brown Rice Recipe
Vegetables: You can certainly skip one or more of the vegetables in this dish or try swapping them out. Just make sure you consider moisture content and cook time.
Parmesan cheese: This really adds some oomph to the dish for serving. If you need this to be vegan, I’d recommend using some nutritional yeast to give it that same flavor boost.
Herbs: You could also serve this with some fresh herbs, like parsley or basil, if you want to give it an herby punch.The best way to cook brown rice depends on what type of brown rice you have – and I cooked a LOT of brown rice to figure this out!Did you know brown basmati rice cooks in half the time of long grain, and short grain brown rice is better baked than cooked on the stove?
Brown Rice Pilaf (+ Video)
This is a recipe for how to cook brown rice so it’s fluffy and tumbles out of the pot like THIS ↓↓
The challenge with cooking brown rice is that it has a harder hull than white rice, being the nutritious bran layer than is left on during milling. So all too often, recipes will lead you down a path to either overcooked mushy surfaces with cooked insides, OR the surface might be perfect but the inside is still hard.
Well, you can ignore all those other recipes you’ve used in the past. This is all you need to know about how to cook brown rice perfectly and consistently, every single time:
Fried Brown Rice
Overview:This method is for long rice grains that cook up fluffy and separated, rather than clumping together. The rapid boiling keeps the grains agitated so they don’t stick together. This “hard and fast” boil method is ideal to cook through the tough, nutritious bran layer on the outside of brown rice.
The Boil and Drain method is just like cooking pasta – with one very important difference: resting. When the rice is drained, you will notice the grains are unpleasantly soggy. When you return it to the pot and leave it covered for 10 minutes, the grains will absorb the excess water and transform into fluffy perfection!
Take care to shake off excess water well when you drain the rice, and to tip out every drop of water from the pot so it steams dry with the residual heat. If you have a slick of water left on the base of the pot when you tip the rice back in, the rice will absorb that water and end up over bloated.
Easy Recipes With Brown Rice
Also, make sure to put the pot back on the turned off stove while the rice is resting. That extra little bit of residual heat will help the rice “steam dry” to perfection.
Freshly cooked Brown Basmati Rice. You can tell from the way the pile is sitting that the grains are separated and fluffy!
Overview: Excellent entirely hands off method to evenly cook through brown rice. Marginal bits of crispy brown rice on the rim of the surface, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. (In fact, I want to pick them off for myself!)
Instant Pot Brown Rice Pilaf
This massively overlooked method of baking rice is ideal because the baking vessel is not in direct contact with the heating element (like with stovetop cooking) so you don’t have to worry about a scorched base, and the long, slow 75 minute cook time allows for the tough outer layer of the brown rice to cook through perfectly.
It is important to use BOILING water not cold tap water for the baked method. Otherwise it takes a good 15 minutes or so for the water to heat up enough to start cooking the rice during which the rice is just wallowing and bloating in warm water, resulting in mushy rice.
Pot of perfectly cooked baked brown rice. Notice how the rice grains look more sticky and clump together than the photo above of the basmati rice which are more separated.
Lemon Parmesan Brown Rice
The Absorption Method of cooking rice is the method whereby rice and water is put in a saucepan and cooked over low heat so the rice absorbs the water, and it is NOT drained. This is how I cook all white rice – everyday rice as well as Jasmin and Basmati.
While itcan work if you soak the rice for 2 hours, then cook on a low heat for 30 minutes, I concluded that it was not the best nor easiest method for brown rice because of the following
Because brown rice grains have a hard nutrition hull (the bran layer which is removed for white rice). This is tougher and takes longer to cook.It is very hard to find the perfect balance using the low-heat absorption method such that the hard hull is perfectly cooked in the same time it takes for the inside cooks through. All too often, you end up overcooking the hull in order to cook the middle (ie mushy outsides), or undercooked hard inside with perfectly cooked outsides.
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Best Brown Rice Recipes (sides And Mains)
Here’s a “successful” pot of brown rice cooked using the Absorption Method. It’s hard to tell from a photo, but these rice grains were softer and far less fluffier than using the Boil & Drain Method AND Baking Method (this is medium grain brown rice).
Technically, any rice that doesn’t have the hull removed is a brown rice, so this includes things like red rice, black rice etc. But for the purpose of this recipe, I’m covering the four common types of brown rice (all pictured in graphic at top of post):
When used cooked – like serving withstir fries, or in rice salads and rice soups – the type of brown rice doesn’t really matter except for things like sushi when the rice needs to stick together (use short grain).
One Pot Brown Rice And Veggies (+ Video)
However, it does matter when uncooked rice is used in a recipe because the cook time and liquid amounts required depends on the type of brown rice used. The recipe author should (hopefully!) specify which type of rice to use.
Not all rice is created equal. If you buy economical house-brand rice, it will not taste as good as the premium brands. This is particularly prevalent with basmati rice – the cheaper brands will always taste more “crumbly” and almost watery, whereas premium quality has a much definitive, pleasant texture and flavour. This applies to both white and brown rice.
I am in Australia and I typically use SunRice (Australia’s largest rice producer) which is a very good quality for everyday purposes.
Brown Rice Pulao Recipe: How To Make Brown Rice Pulao Recipe
Ahh, the possibilities in your newfound perfectly-cooked-brown-rice life!!To smother in stir fries, make fried rice, rice salads (this one or this fabulous new one), and the hundreds of recipes on my website that end with the words “serve with rice”.
Basically, anytime a recipe calls for using or serving with cooked white rice, switch it out with brown rice for the
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