Rice – How to keep long grain brown rice moist

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I'm starting to cook long grain brown rice at night, and I usually make enough to last about 4 days or so. The issue is that it gets REALLY dry when I put it in the fridge. I also usually don't warm it up before eating since I'm always on the go.

How can I keep brown rice moist? Should I not put it in the fridge? I don't have a rice cooker, so I cook it in a pot.

Best Answer

According to Alton Brown, talking about why a short-grain rice salad won't get hard when cold:

But it won't be hard, the way, say, refrigerated Chinese take-out restaurant rice would be. Why is that? Well, long-grain rice, which is usually what's inside one of these, contains a very, very high percentage of amylose. [holds up the model] Remember this guy? When this cools, the amylose and water come together to make a structure that's kind of like, well, kind of like a crystal, which is why it's hard as a rock. The process is called "retrogradation", and it's reversed when the rice is reheated. Now since medium-grain rices have more amylopectin in them, this never happens in the first place, which is why I use medium, and sometimes short-grain rices for all refrigerated-bound applications.

If you can't heat up the rice, have you tried making some sort of short-grain variety?

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