Rice Two Ways

The reasons I love contributor Jim Dixon's recipes are that they're invariably easy, they use seasonal (and even leftover) ingredients and he's not dogmatic in his approach. In this post he takes on that most seventies of grains, brown rice. And, as he mentions, you should feel free to substitute good quality brown rice for the Kokuho.

I love the brown rice I get from Koda Farms. I never really liked brown rice before I started eating Koda’s Kokuho Rose heirloom varietal, but to be fair, that other stuff was probably cooked poorly. The Koda rice requires some effort (soak, cook, rest, fluff, rest; I use a rice cooker, and the whole process takes more than an hour) to taste good, and maybe if all that brown rice I didn’t like had been given the same attention it would’ve been better.


I don’t mind taking the time to make the Koda rice, but lately I’ve tried using the Italian approach: cook it like pasta. Add the rice (without soaking) to a pot of well-salted boiling water, keep it boiling for 30 minutes, drain, return to the pot and let it sit, covered, for 15 minutes. The rice emerges fluffy and a little less sticky than the rice cooker version.

Sometimes I want that, like when I’m serving the rice alongside something hot and savory. But the Italian method gives me the perfect rice for a composed salad like this.

Brown Rice, Corn, & Mint Salad

The “composition” of most of the salads I make depends on what kind of leftovers I have. In this case, a few ears of roasted corn from a few nights earlier. I sliced the kernels off the cob while a chopped onion soaked in a bowl of Katz Late Harvest Zinfandel vinegar. I combined all that with a handful of mint from the garden, chopped roughly, and a generous pour of extra virgin olive oil. A good sprinkle of flor de sal and it was ready.

You don’t need leftover corn to make rice salad. Just take a look in the refrigerator, add something from the garden or market, and use plenty of good olive oil and vinegar. But have some rice ready to go, too.

New Creole: Jambalaya with Brown Rice

I've never had Creole food straight from the source. My exposure has been limited to what's available in the Northwest, so I wouldn't know an authentic jambalaya if I tripped over it on the sidewalk. But I trust contributor Jim Dixon of RealGoodFood to point me in the right direction, since he's a regular habitué of the Big Easy.

For years my go-to rice was Calrose, a medium grain japonica rice developed in the 1940s for California rice growers. But while I’d always been troubled by the nutritional void of white rice, I’d never found a brown rice I liked as much. Then Albert Katz introduced me to Koda Farms incredible heirloom rice, Kokuho Rose. Like the other products I sell, I eat it all the time.

But because of the longer cooking time, I’d never used the Kokuho Rose brown rice, also a medium grain japonica, in dishes where it cooks in some kind of flavorful sauce. And I couldn’t find a source of reliable information for using it that way. So I tried a simple experiment. I made jambalaya.

Brown Rice Jambalaya

The basics of this traditional Creole dish are simple: make a tomato sauce using the aromatic “trinity” of onion, celery and green pepper, use some hearty seasoning, cook at least one but more often several forms of animal protein in the sauce, add rice and either stock or water, and cook until done.

I’d learned from cooking Kokuho Rose that soaking makes the difference. The brown rice, like all whole grains, takes longer to rehydrate, and the results are much better if you let it happen before you start cooking. When I make it in the rice cooker, I soak for 20-30 minutes, drain, add the measured cooking water and then turn on the heat. My light bulb moment was, “I can soak the brown rice for jambalaya!”

First I cooked chopped onion, celery, and green bell pepper in extra virgin olive oil, added some crushed tomatoes and a bit of tomato paste, and a little Dulcet Creole seasoning. Into the sauce went slices of smoky andouille sausage and boneless chicken thigh; when those had cooked a bit, I added the rice.

I’d soaked it for a half hour, then poured off most of the water. For each cup of dry, unsoaked brown rice, I added 1 3/4 cup water. I covered the pot, turned the heat down to simmer, and let it cook. After 45 minutes the rice was getting tender, but the jambalaya seemed soupy, so I let it simmer uncovered for a bit longer.

I won’t claim this jambalaya is the same as you’d find on the Gulf Coast, but the rice was tender and it tasted great. Next experiment: paella.

(Wikipedia says jambalaya comes from transplanted Spanish cooks substituting new world tomatoes for old world saffron when making paella. Food writers and cooks striving for the elusive authenticity claim paella can only be made using Spanish bomba rice and a special pan. We’ll see.)

Photo by Polyparadigm.