Brown Rice

A very basic, high nutrition, low cost starch.

Ingredients

• 1 cup of brown rice
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups of water

Equipment

• A cooking pot
• Measuring cups and spoons

Serving/Storing

In a regular cooking pot, add water, rice, and salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. A simmer is when the water is bubbling, but stops bubbling for at least 5 seconds when you stir it. The rice is done when there's no more water in the pot, or in roughly 45 minutes.

Don't stir rice when it's cooking, unless you want really mushy rice.

1 cup of dry brown rice turns into 3 1/2 cups of cooked rice, enough to serve a modest portion to 4, or a medium portion to 2.

Nutrition

1 cup of brown rice is about 190g, 14g of protein, 5g fat, 6g of dietary fiber, plus a ton of vitamins. It works out to about 700 calories. Split 4 ways, that's 175 calories per person at a 4 person table.

Economics

Estimated cost: a 28 ounce bag of brown rice is available at Stop and Shop (July 26, 2008, Quincy, Massachusetts) for $2.39. 1 cup is about 6.7 ounces, so you'll get four batches, making the effective cost of 1 cup about 60 cents.

Not everyone likes the taste and texture of brown rice, but if you do, you can buy much larger bags at much lower per-ounce costs. A 20 pound bag of Nishiki brown rice is $29 and makes 69 batches, lowering the batch cost to about 42 cents. You'll want to store it in a plastic drum or some other sealable container if possible to keep out pests.

Notes

If you're on a low sodium diet, you can omit the salt, as it's just for flavor and doesn't appreciably alter the cooking time or final product.

You can also alter the water the rice is cooked in - add in some inexpensive chicken stock, for example.

White rice is cheaper than brown rice, but nutritionally quite diminished. Stuff like magnesium gets destroyed in the processing from brown rice to white rice, so if we're going for bang-for-buck, brown rice it is.

Source: Christopher S. Penn, original derived from tons of sources

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