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Home-Made Instant Brown Rice

I use only brown rice and the other night I needed some rice and had to cook it for 45-50 minutes. Made a much later meal than desired. So my brain thinks, you can buy instant brown rice so why can't you make it. So I came up with this idea to make it. (And maybe it's an old idea and you all know how to do this, but I had never seen it so it was new to me.)

I USED

1 cup of rice
2 cups water

Cooked until it was done. Rinsed well and put it on my dehydrator sheets that I make fruit leather on.

Then I filled three trays. Two with 1 cup of cooked rice and another with 1/2 cup to see it the lesser one dried better.

I have an American Harvest Gardenmaster dehydrator. I set it at 130 degrees for 3 hours.

Either one worked, the 1 cup tray had to be broken up a bit which wasn't very hard or time consuming.

I ended up with 1 1/2 cups of dried instant rice.

To cook it I used 1/2 cup of instant rice to 1 cup of water and boiled it on a med-low heat for about 12-15 minutes. Rice is done and ready to use or eat.

Simple and easy for a quick dish. Much less than $14.99 for 28 oz. I'm not sure it's as healthy as fresh cooked. I want to do some research on that, but for a quick fix it would be better than white rice I think.

At this point, I'm going to make a dehydrator full ( 8 trays ) for when I need some in a hurry but will cook it fresh otherwise.

This is also posted on my blog at http://mountainvalleyfarms.blogspot.com.

Tags: brown, convience, foods, instant, rice

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Comment by me on March 20, 2011 at 10:58pm: I'm just storing it in a jar. I think that should keep it. I'm going to try vacuum sealing in a bag and see how long it keeps that way.

Comment by Kathy on March 20, 2011 at 9:30pm: Very creative thinking.... once the rice has been dehydrated, are you just storing it in a jar? or does it need to be kept in the freezer.

Comment by Shellie A. Gades on March 18, 2011 at 12:58pm: Alla - something else I have done with brown rice (which I love) is just make up a mess and then freeze it in smaller packages. However, I do like the "instant" version better! Thank you.

Comment by me on March 18, 2011 at 12:45pm: Shellie - I think it could definitely be done in the oven on a low temp, maybe around 150-175 degrees.

Cornelia - Absolutely, great ideas

Comment by Shellie A. Gades on March 18, 2011 at 12:14pm: Alla - you're a genius. I wonder if this could be done on cookie sheets even on low temp in oven? What do you think?

Comment by Cornelia on March 18, 2011 at 11:41am: This is very interesting, Alla. A creative use of your dehydrator for sure. I'm thinking that this would be great for camping trips, as well as for adding to freeze-and-bake casseroles where the rice cooks as the meal heats.