How to Easily Cook Brown Rice in Pressure Cooker?

I had been reading a lot about brown rice being healthy option than the regular rice we Indians eat. So, I thought of giving a try to it. When I bought the brown rice and brought it home, I had little idea about how tough it is to make brown rice. We really ever realize that preparing rice can also be a tough task given the nature of white rice that takes such a low time and effort to get cooked! However, I just cooked the brown rice in pressure cooker in my own conventional way and when I opened the cooker, it was a shocking scene! The brown rice looked almost similar to its raw state with all water floating above it. I had to really work hard to make it soft (and it never got that soft) to at least eat it. It took me over an hour to make it an edible thing.


After that, I just forgot about cooking brown rice (nightmare it was!) and pushed the jar containing it at the back of the kitchen shelf and my mind. However, on and off, it used to come back to my mind and I always pushed back the thought of cooking brown rice but today I just decided to cook it so that it doesn't go waste. Its expensive you see and its not a good idea to waste food. So, I researched a little about how to cook brown rice using Internet (I love to browse through the recipes anyway!)

What I found in my search over net were two methods of cooking brown rice- a stove top method and the pressure cooker method. However, both the ways for cooking brown rice take about an hour- as I concluded after reading a lot many posts on making brown rice. It was quite a thing to ask me to spend a full hour for just cooking rice! So, I decided to experiment a little with my newly acquired knowledge of cooking brown rice. And it turned out well! It just took me about 20 minutes to cook brown rice in pressure cooker. Here's how I did it!

Soak Brown Rice 

I soaked brown rice for three hours. Its better to soak for three hours than to struggle for an hour waiting the rice to be cooked! You almost always know that you are going to have brown rice on your lunch or dinner menu! So, just soak it for about three hours. Take 1:2 proportion of Brown rice and water (1 cup of rice and 2 cups of water). Wash the rice well before soaking in just the amount of water that you will need to cook brown rice.

How to Cook Brown Rice in Pressure Cooker?

Now this is the big question! Take the soaked brown rice and transfer it to the pressure cooker along with the water. If you want, you can add some salt to it but i don't add salt to any rice. Now close the cooker with its whistle on its lid. Let the brown rice cook in the pressure cooker on medium high flame for eight whistles. Although it looks a way too much for cooking rice but remember this is brown rice! After eight whistles, put the gas flame on simmer (lowest flame) but don't try to take off the whistle. Let the brown rice cook on simmer and for four more whistles. This time it will take a little longer to get each pressure cooker whistle because its on simmer. After four whistles, put off the flame and let the cooker as it is. Don't try to let off the steam by taking off the whistle.

When the cooker cools down on its own and there is no steam left in the cooker, open it and see if your rice have cooked. Mine were perfectly soft with the right consistency and without any water that I enjoyed with 'Gatte ki Sabzi' (see the image). However, I had previously thought that after opening the pressure cooker lid, if I find out that the rice has not become soft, I would let it simmer for some more time with the lid on (without the whistle this time). I did not need to do this. If you see your brown rice did not come of well, you can consider this option though.

P.S- After the brown rice is as soft as you want, put on the lid of cooker again and let it be. This makes the rice become fluffy in the sense that there is no trace of water and every grain seem to be set apart from each other without any stickiness.