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If I mix white rice and brown rice, which setting should I use on my rice cooker?
posted by Madeleine20 on Tue, 2010-02-02 17:49
I mixed 1 part brown rice to two parts haiga rice. Should I use the white or brown rice setting? Thank you!
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Loretta will have the expert opinion on this, but my gut reaction is "don't do it". Brown rice and white rice take different amounts of time to cook, so by the time the brown rice is cooked the white stuff will be way overdone. If you want to mix them, cook them separately first, then mix.
Bronwyn
My blog is Food and Shoes
Loretta will have the expert opinion on this
Sorry, not at all :(
I've never used haiga rice so don't know anything about cooking times for it. I do mix other grains in with white rice (mostly just mugi/barley but you can add flax, sesame seeds, poppy seeds to the barley and I've heard of quinoa and even oatmeal being used) but I've never mixed brown and white rice for cooking.
If you were to sprout/germinate brown rice first then you could probably cook it with white rice (I only started germinating rice recently thanks to a recent thread and because I realised the yogurt setting on my rice machine was appropriate for this). I've been cooking germinated brown rice using the white rice setting on my machine - seems to work fine. I also tried germinating some very old brown rice I had and this didn't work, however, because this rice had soaked for over 24 hours it still cooked OK with the white rice setting.
This is a convoluted way of coming to my own, non-expert and very personal conclusion that you might be able to successfully cook brown rice with white if you are prepared to soak and periodically rinse (so it doesn't smell) your brown rice over a 24 hour period - but then you may as well germinate it...
I keep meaning to try making brown rice with barley. My grandmother gave me a cookbook with some version of brown rice and barley (doesn't even mention what types of either grain), since I have had a few bad results with that cookbook I should really just suck it up and look up the proportions else where.
For the flax and sesame seeds I would think to mix them in after, to try and retain more of their health benefits, but now that you mention it that might be something interesting to try (when I am not concerned about getting my omega-3's for the day).
If you're able to open your rice cooker while the rice is cooking, you can set it for the brown rice setting, then add the haiga during the cooking process (halfway through if you didn't soak the rice, probably sooner if you did). It won't be superb rice, but it'll be okay. (At least, this has turned out fine with brown and white rice on my stovetop.)
Does your rice cooker have a timer? What I do is mix 1/2 and 1/2, wash it in the morning, and put it in the cooker with the cooking water to soak all day. I set it on "white rice" and it comes out nicely. I think the soaking helps soften the brown rice. When I try to cook both together immediately, either the brown isn't done or the white is too done.
Thanks for all the replies. Before I had a chance to read them, I tried cooking it on the brown rice setting. It was terrible, but the haiga-mai was quite mushy and gooey. I think I gave up on this=)
If you have a rice steamer and you mix white and brown rice together use the white rice setting. I do this all of the time. If you are cooking 2 cups of W&B medium grain rice add 3 cups of water to it. If you are cooking it on a stove top set it at med low for 35-45 minutes. Make sure you have a tight lid and don't lift up the lid until it is done. If you do add about 1/4 cup more water and give it an extra 5-10 minutes. Good luck.
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