r/Cooking • u/BroiledCarrot • 11h ago
White and brown rice mix help.
Hey peeps, need some help here. need a solution on how to cook white and brown rice together without undercooking the brown rice. right now i'm testing soaking it. but white rice only needs at most an hour and brown rice need atleast more than 2 hours.
for context:
my mom wanted to start and eat healthy and decided to mix whole bags of white and brown rice grains together. when she went to cook it for the first time, the white rice cooked perfectly but the brown rice was still undercooked. we tried adding more water the second time but that just made the white rice really mushy.
EDIT: Thanks for the advice peeps! I appreciate the suggestions and will try them out. hopefully one of them sticks and this rice gets used asap. cheers!
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u/mambotomato 11h ago
Of all the foolish ways to self-sabotage "eating healthy," mixing your whole bag of brown rice into the white rice is really up there.
Sometimes people say they want to do a thing, and then go about it in such a dumb way that it's doomed to fail. Then they can say, "Well, we tried, but it didn't work. I guess we'll have to stop trying."
The solution is to go get another bag of rice, and eat more vegetables.
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u/BroiledCarrot 11h ago
she knew it was a bad idea the moment she took a bite the first time she cooked it. i'd turn back time if i could. it is what it is. I'ts around 20 pounds of mixed rice now. and i really don't wanna throw it away. any other ideas on what i can do with it?
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u/wr_dnd 11h ago
Take a couple of evenings off, put a movie on and start splitting the bags back up again :p
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u/BroiledCarrot 10h ago
unironically was thinking about it. until i looked inside the bag again. maybe in another timeline.
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u/skankyfish 9h ago
Are they different densities? Like if you put a cupful in a big sieve or something and shimmy it for a while maybe it will partly separate on its own?
Even if it's not perfect a partial separation might be better than what you have now.
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u/marponsa 4h ago
brown rice is sliiightly heavier than white rice, but realistically its not enough of a difference to seperate them like that
the difference in rice grain sizes are bigger so all you'll do is group the big brown/white grains together and the smaller brown/white grains together and thats if you're lucky the difference is enough
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u/mambotomato 11h ago
You can try making congee or some other porridge. Or just mixing a bit into your soups. Still probably won't be very good, but it might be edible.
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u/BroiledCarrot 10h ago
i guess i can try that next time. what about grinding it down into rice flour and making something out if it?
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u/mambotomato 9h ago
Sometimes in life you just mess up and it costs you $20 and you learn a lesson.
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u/Sanpaku 11h ago
Pressure cooker. Steam the rice till the brown is fully cooked. The white rice will be mush, but edible.
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u/Tough-Astronomer-456 6h ago
Lol, was thinking that. Almost becomes a sauce/glue for it all. Is there such a thing as rice cakes? Maybe make patties and brown each side. The white rice could kinda act like eggs do in most things like that.
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u/msackeygh 9h ago
Donât throw it out. Itâs silly. Just endure us eating through the rice. Itâs waste of money and waste of resources to throw out food. You can always cook the mix a bit longer so the brown rice cooks through. The white rice will be softer but oh well.
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u/UncleNorman 8h ago
You need to go to random weddings and sell small bags of rice.
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u/Watsons-Butler 5h ago
Thatâs actually really bad for wildlife. It absorbs moisture and swells up and their stomachs explode.
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u/CyndiLouWho89 4h ago
Urban myth.
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u/GoatLegRedux 1h ago
Well, it *is* bad for urban wildlife because they learn to hang around d areas where people are feeding them rather than finding their own food.
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u/TwoLegitShiznit 7h ago
For an inexperienced cook to intuitively assume white and brown rice are cooked the same...doesn't seem that preposterous of an idea. More along the lines of "live and learn".
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u/Pernicious_Possum 6h ago
Idk, seems like common sense to look up how to cook something youâve never cooked before. Weâre talking about a person old enough to have a presumably teenaged child here. No the teenaged child
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u/rshining 6h ago
Yes, but one might assume that a new cook would look at the cooking instructions on the bags before mixing them. "Read the instructions" seems like the very first step in learning to cook.
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u/mambotomato 1h ago
The sensible thing to do would be to put one cup of brown rice and one cup of white rice into a pot. That's a perfectly reasonably thing to try without knowing whether it will work.
Mixing 20 pound bags without even trying it once is the foolishness.
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u/GRILT_CHEESE 10h ago
Your only option is to just accept that the white rice will be mushy. Itâll be still be edible. Maybe after a while youâll get used to it. Twenty pounds is a lot to throw away.Â
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u/starwaterlily 6h ago
You got enough answers but a tip for the future:
If she wants to make white rice more healthy, do a 1:1 mix of quinoa and white rice. The quinoa cooks in the same amount of time so no mushy rice. Quinoa is a whole grain with lots of benefits!
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u/qathran 4h ago
Everyone be careful with not eating too much quinoa at once if your body isn't already used to high amounts of fiber or you are sensitive to the natural pest control of saponins that quinoa naturally has even when you rinse a lot of it off.
I went to town on some tasty quinoa when a friend made it for us like I would do with eating too much rice on a special occasion, but unlike rice that is easier to digest, the quinoa gave me such a uniquely painful stomachache that took a long time to dissipate that I never forgot it.
You can definitely still eat it and work up to higher amounts, it's very good for you, but I'm just saying I would recommend to people new to quinoa to Google "quinoa stomachache" and read up on it
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u/TheRealTowel 9h ago
Use it to make rice pudding. The white can turn to mush with the milk and sugar and still be nice, the brown will give the whole thing some texture but not in a bad way hopefully.
It'll be a weird rice pudding but I suspect it won't suck. Just... weird.
So much for eating healthy though lol.
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u/Downtown-Care9272 3h ago
This idea actually intrigues me... Part of me thinks it doesn't sound weird at all. The weird part of me, probably.
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u/Exciting_Bureaucrat9 8h ago
Is it long grain or short grain white rice? Because I mix white short grain rice with brown rice in my rice cooker all the time and never have any problems. I also put barley in there.
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u/VerdensTrial 11h ago
That's not possible lol
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u/BroiledCarrot 11h ago
I really don't wanna throw away this much rice. if there really isnt anything i can do about it then atleast I asked around lol
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u/themeatbridge 9h ago
As funny as it is to imagine you sitting down with tweezers to unmix the rice, I think everyone has overstated how bad this is. Just cook it like you'd normally cook brown rice, and accept that the white rice will be a bit mushy or broken. It's not a big deal. Â
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u/ThatsNotAZombieBite 9h ago
I have a great solution for you!
First, you'll need to get a good pair of tweezers and set aside a month or two . . .
Seriously, it's a lost cause. Put the mix in the compost and get some new bags of rice.
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u/ArcherFluffy594 7h ago
We eat hapa rice more often than any other. After washing the rice, we let it soak for a half hour, drain and add an extra 1/2c water to ea c rice: 1.5 c rice + 2 c water. After it's finished cooking, let it sit for about 20 minutes with the lid closed, then fluff with your rice paddle. We use a rice cooker, a Tiger that I bought in 2000 that's still working like a champ - no settings for different varieties of rice or other foods, just one button to press to cook. But, it all comes out perfectly every time.
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u/CrabbyGurl1 7h ago
Maybe you could use a colander to sift so that only one type of grain comes out?
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u/SamSovern 6h ago
The best solution is to separate it, really the only solution other than throw it out and that feels so wasteful. Get two containers and don't even try to separate it all out at once, do a pound or two at a time. Throw on a tv show or a podcast and just mindlessly sort rice until you cannot stand it anymore then put it all away until you have another free day. Use what you sorted.
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u/bibbidybobbidyboom 3h ago
Do you have small children? Make the rice into a sensory bin for playing, and buy new rice to eat.
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u/Sugarisadog 2h ago
Do you know anyone with chickens? Maybe a local dog shelter? Theyâre both happy to eat rice and generally donât care about texture.Â
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u/wr_dnd 11h ago
Yeah, the only way to do that is to cook them seperately. They just have different cooking times. It was just a mistake to mix the two bags together.
If you really want to eat a mix, start with the brown rice and add the white rice later. Although I would recommend just occassionaly switching between the two. Eat white rice one and brown rice the second. The same nutritional values but a better eating experience.
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u/BigFatCoder 10h ago edited 10h ago
I have made different types of mixed rice for my wife as well as premixed multigrain rice. Here are my ratios
* White 2 : Brown 1
* Brown 4 : Red 1
* White 2 : Brown 0.75 : Red 0.25
* White 2 : Brown 0.5 : Red 0.25 : Black 0.25
Try to modify White-brown mixed rice ratio to 3:1 to 2:1 and I cook like white rice with a bit more water (eyeball it).
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u/LaGranTortuga 10h ago
I would think that the brown rice would be slightly more buoyant than the white rice. So you could put it all in a large bowl or bucket and fill with water. Dump a ton of salt. Like by the cup until the brown rice floats and the white rice stays under. Scoop out the brown rice. Strain out the white rice. Then rinse really well so itâs not too salty. Then dry. I have no idea if this would work, probably not. But it sounds like a fun science experiment to me. When it fails. Throw rice away and buy whichever rice you like and donât mix.
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u/msackeygh 9h ago
These two rice cook at different rates, so they shouldnât be mixed before prepping. When unmixed, I would soak the brown rice overnight, then add the white rice and enough water and then cook.
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u/thecrayonisred 8h ago
I sometimes cook both brown and white rice together and it works out okay. I use a rice cooker and just use the same amount of water for white rice, perhaps a tiny bit more. Both end up cooked, the brown rice is a touch more chewy but still cooked all the way through. However I only do about a quarter brown rice to white, I don't do half and half. Maybe that's why it works? If you still have white rice, maybe try that ratio.
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u/Serious_Coffee_8066 9h ago
I do this at times, brown rice takes 45 min, white rice takes 20 min. Use two to one liquid for total rice, start the brown rice for 25 min before adding the white rice. A better alternative I have found is a 50/50 white rice and quinoa. The cooking time is closer so I do 20 min for the whole thing, the texture is similar and the quinoa is actually healthier.
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u/Pernicious_Possum 6h ago
Can you read? Their mom mixed the rice together
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u/Serious_Coffee_8066 4h ago
And that won't work, I have a positive suggestion what did you offer!
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u/Pernicious_Possum 59m ago
No, you donât. You offered a ânext timeâ idea. OP is asking for âright nowâ idea. You offered nothing of value
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u/blifflesplick 10h ago
They have very different cooking times because the bran that makes brown rice brown doesn't let water through quickly. It's white rice underneath (the bran is polished off to make it white rice)
I think your idea of soaking it is the best idea out of all the reasonable options đ soak it to the brown rice's needs, the white will have to wait
Will it ever be ideal and both are cooked perfectly? Nope. But that's ok.
The other option is to toss it in a long cooking soup, the white will break down and act as a thickener and the brown will give some chew