Baked Rice

I finally bothered to do the volume to weight conversion on Alton Brown’s baked rice recipe that I have been using. The volumetric version is a bit inelegant and unwieldy to scale up or down. It uses 2 parts water to 1 part rice by weight, however, and that is a little prettier. Here is the original recipe on the Food Network site. I did the weight conversion below, with the amounts from the original recipe in parentheses.

Ingredients

1. 1 part rice (10 oz/283 g/1.5 cup)
2. 2 parts water or stock (20 oz/566 g/2.5 cup)
3. A bit of a lipid (1 tbsp butter)
4. Salt (1 tsp)
   

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 375°
2. Boil the liquid, lipid and salt in a heavy saucepan with a lid – I use a 2 qt Dutch oven
3. Add the rice, bring the liquid back to a boil. I am not going to counsel you against stirring the rice, go ahead if you want. I do, and it feels great.
4. Cover and bake for 1 hour.
5. Remove from oven, and fluff the rice with a fork immediately. Let it stand 10 minutes or so before serving.

Notes

1. This really is the perfect way to make rice. It won't boil over, it won't scorch and the texture is perfect. I have not tried one of those $300 Japanese rice cookers, however, so maybe I will change my tune later.
2. The lipid and salt are for flavor, as far as I know, you can omit them or play with the amounts.
   
3. You can add whatever you want to the rice before cooking. Carrots, celery and onions are obvious. Nuts and dried fruit work great, too. If you add any dried fruit, either add more liquid or macerate them first to prevent them soaking up too much of the cooking liquid.
4. AB's version calls for medium or short grain brown rice, but I have tried this with a number of different kinds of rice, and it works fine every time. If you are on the fence about brown rice, though, try it using this method. It is really good for you and it has way more flavor than white rice. Save the white stuff for risottos and pudding. Definitely for pudding.