"Julie Bove" wrote:
>
With your bits of different brown rice I'd feed it all to the birds
and buy a package of new... brown rice has a short shelf life anyway,
unless refrigerated/frozen it goes rancid in less than a year... most
folks who eat brown rice don't notice the rancidity; TIAD.

<top posting due to too much detail, mostly worthless verbiage>
>I have never washed my rice before but... I bought a horking huge back of
>aged Basmati brown at Costco. And I am using it to make Spanish rice. Yes,
>I know this isn't the typical rice. I would normally use Texmati for this
>but I only have one cup left and I want to make a very large batch of it.
>So I need more rice than that. The only other brown rice I have is 1 cup of
>long grain, which would be my second choice but again not enough. And a
>couple of small packages of some kind of Asian rice which appears to be a
>medium grain. So this is the closest thing that I have.
>
>The directions say to wash in cold water, then cook at a ratio of 1 cup of
>rice to 2.5 cups of water. Can add 1 tsp. of salt and oil if desired. You
>are then directed to let this mixture soak for 15 minutes, the cook, bring
>to a boil while stirring, then cover and simmer for 35 minutes.
>
>I am not sure how this batch will turn out. The rice did appear to need to
>be washed. There was a little crap in it. Like straw like stuff. Could
>just be lone hulls or something. Dunno. I rinsed it well and drained it
>and lost a few grains in the process. My intent was to use 2 cups of rice,
>then about 4 cups of liquid which includes salsa. It is a cheap jarred
>salsa and it contained a few lone kernels of corn and a few beans. I cooked
>up a pound of small red beans earlier. I will probably add some of those
>in. Maybe a cup or so plus a can of corn (drained) towards the end of the
>cooking time. I am also adding a pound of cooked ground beef, and some
>chopped red and green peppers and white onions. I did not measure these but
>portioned them out for the freezer. Just eyeballing this there is probably
>1.25 cups of each.
>
>So... I kind of messed up in measuring out my liquids and I think that I
>put in a little much because these veggies are not cooked and will add
>liquid. I could cook them separately and then add them but I feel that I
>will get a better flavor if they are cooked in there. So to compensate, I
>intended to add another .25 cups of rice, but I screwed up and dumped in
>about a half a cup. Yeah, I know I am going all metric then not. Deal with
>it. Heh. Hopefully that part will all work out in the end. I'll check it
>at about 25 minutes and add more water if I need to or cook it down a little
>with the lid off if I need to do that.
>
>But... I just wonder about the washing part. If you wash your rice... How
>do you do it? I had read somewhere to put it in a colander and rinse it but
>mine has holes that are far too large for this. I used to have a big wire
>one but no longer do. Can't remember what became of it but I think perhaps
>it broke somehow. I do have mesh strainers but they would be too small for
>2 cups of rice. But... I also thought... If you are rinsing it in the
>strainer, then only the teensy pieces of crap would drain out.
>
>So... I put it all in my pot, filled the pot with water a couple of times
>then drained most of it off, restraining the rice with my hand. I did lose
>a few grains in doing this. Then to get the rice out, I just scooped it
>with my hand back into the measuring cup. I was rather astounded at how
>much liquid the rice had soaked up at that point because it totally
>overfilled the 2.5 cup, cup then! For the remaining bit that I added, I
>just sort of did the same thing with the rice in the measuring cup then used
>my hand to restrain it as I poured the water out. Again, lost a few pieces.
>There has got to be a better way!
>