Are there any tips on how to properly cook brown rice using a portable induction burner? I use my standard ratio of 1 cup rice to 1 1/2 cup water bring to a boil, cover and reduce to low for 20 minutes, let stand for 10 minutes on the regular electric stove top. However my induction burner is labeled warm, simmer, boil and I have yet to achieve satisfactory results.
Rice – Cooking Brown Rice on a Portable Induction Burner
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No noodles are actually called "brown noodles" but the only noodles I'm aware of that are brownish in colour are either wheat or buckwheat.
Given the suggestion to cook it with a "protein source", and given that this is meant to be a quick and easy meal, I'm sure that the idea was to cook some dried noodles briefly in soup along with some sliced or shredded meat. This is common in Asian cuisine, and it can be nutritious, assuming you don't rely on instant noodles and artificial flavour packets.
You'd probably be looking at one of the following:
Ramen, which is traditionally made from la mian (hand-pulled buckwheat noodles, although sometimes they're made from wheat), served in broth, usually with meat and green onions, and often flavoured with soy sauce. Keep in mind that real ramen is actually quite difficult and time-consuming to make, and is not even close to the "instant ramen" you see for 99 cents a package. You can cheat a little and still have a decent meal by buying quality dried noodles and cooking them in real homemade broth, or at least canned broth.
Udon, AKA "thick noodles" (made from wheat), which are also typically prepared in broth, specifically dashi - broth made from kombu (kelp), dried tuna or bonito flakes, and occasionally mushrooms, and seasoned with soy sauce and mirin (rice wine). Meat isn't as common in udon, but fish and tofu are, especially deep-fried. You can still make it with beef or chicken. You can find decent-quality instant dashi at Asian grocery stores, so again, prep time is minimal if you get the right ingredients.
Soba (buckwheat) noodle soup, which (in my experience) is almost always served in miso (again, available in instant form). Seasonings and toppings are otherwise similar to udon, although they tend to get a bit more elaborate. For example, the wiki page references tsukimi soba which means poaching a raw egg in the cooked soup.
Finally Phở, which is the Vietnamese take on this, which uses rice noodles (so definitely not brown). The most common preparation (at least in all of the Vietnamese restaurants around here) is simply the hot soup and noodles with some rare beef dropped in to briefly cook, then topped with basil and bean sprouts just before eating. The broth is really very difficult for non-natives to learn and instant pho is usually terrible, so I wouldn't recommend this for beginners.
Of course you can always just go with good old-fashioned Western chicken noodle soup or chicken soup with rice and vegetables. Chicken noodle soup usually uses egg noodles, which are, again, definitely not brown, so although they're a fine choice, they're almost certainly not what the question is referring to.
The basic differences between white and brown rice is explained below (as written here):
An important first question to ask about all rice-and for that matter, most foods-is how much it has been processed. In the case of rice, processing usually involves milling and polishing. The outermost layer of rice, called the hull, is removed to make brown rice. Brown rice is rice with the whole kernel intact and the kernel is still surrounded by all layers of bran.
To produce white rice, the bran layers of the rice have to be milled off. Most of the rice germ is also removed during this abrasive grinding process. At this point in the process the rice is called milled, unpolished white rice. Finally, a wire brush machine is used to remove the aleurone layer that remains on the rice. This step is called polishing. As polishing is not an all-or-nothing process, semi-polished rice may still contain parts of its aleurone layer.
Additional information about brown rice (here):
[Brown rice] has a mild nutty flavor, and is chewier and more nutritious than white rice, but goes rancid more quickly because the germ—which is removed to make white rice—contains fats that can spoil. Any rice, including long-grain, short-grain, or sticky rice, may be eaten as brown rice.
So, because they are processed differently and have different parts of the grain intact or removed, your method of cooking is going to vary.
I have used this method of cooking brown basmati rice with pretty good success. It includes washing the rice a number of times prior to cooking and adding salt. This method advises adding oil after the cooking process, but I typically add it into my rice while it cooks, or even sauteeing the grains in oil then adding water to the pot to cook.
It is also suggested that leaving your brown rice to soak for 15-20 minutes (and sometimes even longer) can be beneficial as well.
All of that aside: if you're looking to stick with a flavor and texture similar to that of white rice then brown rice may not be your thing. I know that as a jasmine rice eater I do not particularly care for the texture of brown (even brown jasmine). As mentioned above it does have a "nutty" flavor and is "chewier" regardless of how well/properly it is prepared. It changes the flavor and feel of every dish I serve it with. Just a heads up.
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Best Answer
For what it's worth, I find it difficult to get brown rice cooked properly using any sort of regimented process. It seems sensitive to the variables involved, and it doesn't come out right without me being more involved in the cooking process.
So, I follow the procedure which (if I recall correctly) I found in Cook's Illustrated: cook the rice in a much larger volume of water than is needed (two-to-one, or even three-to-one if you can spare the room in the pot), stirring occasionally, monitor done-ness by tasting the rice periodically, and when the rice has the desired consistency (different people prefer different degrees of firmness), take it off the heat and drain it (e.g. in a chinois).
Even using this approach, it's important to maintain the heat relatively low, at a simmer. But it's a lot more forgiving than techniques that demand you get the rice-to-water ratio perfect, because you never run out of water, and the rice never sticks to the bottom of the pot.
The "simmer" setting on your hob should work well with this approach, but if the hob is so underpowered that "simmer" doesn't simmer, the "boil" setting might work out okay, if that setting doesn't in fact result in a very vigorous boil.
At the end of the day though, if your hob has only two cooking levels (plus the "warm" setting), it might just not be a hob worth using. There are plenty of other hob choices out there, which allow a more fine-grained control than choosing between "not quite warm enough to simmer" and "rolling boil", and with a better hob, cooking rice should be very easy, whatever technique you prefer.