Brown Rice

Long grain brown rice cooks up fluffy and separate; short grain is stickier and chewier, so pick based on the dish. Give it a quick rinse in a fine-mesh strainer to rinse off dusty starch, and don't skip checking the date on the bag: the natural oils in the bran mean dry brown rice goes rancid in about 6 months in the pantry, so store it airtight (or in the freezer, where it keeps over a year). Cooked brown rice holds 4–6 days in the fridge and freezes flat in zip-top bags for up to 6 months, which makes it an easy grain to batch cook on a Sunday.

Brown rice takes 40–45 minutes on the stovetop, roughly double the time of white rice, because the bran layer slows water absorption. Use a 1:2 rice to water ratio, bring it to a boil, then drop to the lowest simmer with the lid on and do not peek. Lifting the lid vents the steam that's doing the cooking. When the time is up, let it steam off heat for 10 more minutes before fluffing; that rest is the difference between fluffy and gummy. Times for the Instant Pot, oven, and rice cooker are all below. Honestly the rice cooker's brown rice setting is my lazy default: 45 minutes of not thinking about it.