Given my current ayurvedic diet, rice—especially brown rice—has become a staple. Brown rice takes forever to cook, however, and I'm pretty sure that resorting to Trader Joe's precooked frozen brown rice is thumbing my nose to a host of ayurvedic principles.
Until I have a spare $439 (that's how much this one costs),
I've therefore been researching methods of preparing rice in a slow cooker. Slim pickin's out there on the interwebs, but I think it's possible. This page of recipes had the note "Rice is tricky in the crockpot and brown or converted white rice works better than regular white rice." I read that one or two other places: that white rice in a slow cooker can get too mushy. I've also been reading that it's good to add butter (probably ghee, in my case) to the rice and water, or to grease the crockpot with butter/ghee before cooking, to prevent the rice from sticking. And look at this slow-cooker blog I found while researching!
An about.com page had this recipe, calling for converted rice, and a Google Books search rendered some info. from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Slow Cooker Cooking.
I am not convinced there it one easy/common/accepted way to do this, so more research and some experimentation are in order.
Suggestions welcome!
Hi Riggy - I have emailed my Japanese students to see if any of them can suggest a good rice cooker or other brown rice method. I know some who swear by pressure cookers. I have used my plain old run-of-the-mill Dillard's rice cooker (maybe $40?) for brown rice with satisfactory results. My suggestion is to make 4 cups at a time and eat it throughout the week.
ReplyDeleteMy request for you is to please post more information about your Ayurvedic diet. When I was in Maine I followed such a diet, and never felt more healthy. What are the best resources you have found, and are you fortunate enough to have a practitioner in Ann Arbor?
Love,
Heather
BTW, Zojirushi makes plenty of lower-priced rice makers as well: http://www.zojirushi.com/ourproducts/ricecookers/ricecookers.html
ReplyDeleteIs this your uncle who taught you that naughty trick with the Land O' Lakes butter box?
Very interesting about how you you can leave the rice in it for a few days... Personally, i LOVE Trader Joe's frozen pre-cooked brown rice packets. Talk about easy. Is it the freezing part that's a no-no or is that just no longer really "all natural"?
ReplyDeleteThe "other" Heather ;)
My Heathers collide! Actually, you met each other over Halloween 2000 [?]. Glad to see you together again.
ReplyDeleteHeather: Thanks for picking your students' brains! I think what I'm thinking is that I want the high-end fancy model that lets me leave rice in there for days, but don't want to spring for a temporary/intermediate model that's less expensive. Am I making things difficult? Probably; I'm good at that.
I would like to post more about my Ayurvedic diet; I have to get back to focusing on it and gathering/learning more recipes geared toward it. I've been pretty laissez-faire about it for the past month, and I can feel the difference. I met my ayurvedic doctor (who's returning soon from an apprenticeship in Nepal) through my sangha.
Heather: I know--I like the frozen brown rice too! (my sister will buy three boxes at a time when she sees it, as Trader Joe's regularly runs out of it). I think it doesn't fit the diet because 1) it isn't freshly prepared, but pre-prepared. Aryuveda's all about freshly prepared food; I think some hardcore practitioners never eat leftovers. 2) Being stored frozen, it's cold (despite the fact you heat it first), and "cold" is a quality to avoid, for my makeup, anyway. But I am certainly not familiar enough with the diet, yet, to give you a good answer.