*Pressure Cooker Brown Rice*
Cooking brown rice in a pressure cooker is quite easy, but you have to take some SAFETY PRECAUTIONS! If you don't, the rice (or beans) will foam up in the cooker, plug the safety valve, and ...BOOM! If nothing else, this will create a mess!
But, it's real easy to avoid by setting up something like an "internal double boiler".
Use any size pressure cooker, but the 6 quart size is the easiest one to work with. Find a stainless steel mixing bowl with high sides that "just fits" into a pressure cooker.
Make a "standoff" to put in the bottom, which will raise the mixing bowl height maybe an inch or so off the bottom of the cooker. I found a piece of "holey" metal to use for mine; however, another simple solution is to zip-tie 4-5 Mason jar rings together, stacked side by side.
Put a couple of inches of water in the cooker, add the mixing bowl, and put the rice (about 2 cups – dry) into the mixing bowl (not directly into the cooker). This leaves some space on top of the bowl to put in the "Goodies".
I use 2 or 3 tomatoes, about a cup of shredded cabbage (or some other Greens), 2 or 3 medium size carrots (chopped into small pieces), about a cup of mushrooms, 2 or 3 stalks of celery (chopped into small pieces), some chunks of sweet potatoes, some onions, and a nice handful of raw almonds.
You can vary the above mix according to your tastes. When your mixture is ready, put all of it over the rice (dry) and then add the water. Be sure to use less water than you normally would use to cook rice. I slowly pour about 1 and 1/2 glasses (or 12 oz) of water over this mixture - directly into the stainless steel mixing bowl (which is already in the pressure cooker). The veggies will compensate for some of the water that you would normally add to the rice - especially tomatoes.
Adjust the amount of veggies over the rice, so that the safety valve will be clear when closing the pressure cooker. You use a bit less water for the rice in this setup, because some of the needed moisture will be in the form of steam rising from the boiling water below the mixing bowl (in the bottom of the cooker), plus the steam in the water poured over the rice.
Experiment - until you get the right amount of "fluffiness" in the rice. Then, close up the cooker and bring up the heat. When the "jiggling" starts, just let it go for about 20 minutes. Then, turn off the heat and let it cool naturally. Do NOT release the pressure. Let it bleed off on its own!
Experiment - adjust the amount of water added to the mixture so that the rice will be "nice and fluffy" at the end of about twenty minutes of the "Jiggling" pressure. I wouldn't go any longer than twenty minutes, because the rice will get mushy. THIS is the timing I use with MY rig. It could be different with yours.
Dump the well cooked rice and veggies into a big cooking pot (not a mixing bowl), in order to keep this hot for as long as possible while you are mixing in the other ingredients. Add about 1/2 stick of butter, a sprinkling of black pepper, and a generous sprinkling of curry powder (and whatever other spices YOU like). Cover the cooking pot and let it sit for a few minutes, so the flavors can blend.
You can also add to the above ingredients a can of Tuna (well drained), or one of those pouches of Tuna (which I prefer).
This will make a nice "casserole size" meal for at least 4 people (or for one Person, for 3 or 4 days). When using it to feed one person over several days, I portion this into 1-quart, snap lid, cottage cheese containers. Then, to re-heat it, I put one container into the top of a 1-qt. double boiler, slice up an avocado over the top, and 3 or 4 slices of cheese. I then let this heat slowly, while I shower and shave, etc. By the time I am finished, the cheese has melted over the other "goodies". I can eat this right out of the top of the double boiler, because that is shaped like a big soup bowl and sits nicely on a plate at the table.
It takes less time to DO all this than to tell about it, and I can be doing other little tasks around the kitchen while this is in process.
Here is a picture of my "Rig" for cooking rice in a pressure cooker.
NOTE - The stainless steel bowl is about 8 cups, not 6 cups, as stated in the picture.
I have been using this Rig for over 10 years, just like the "Dry Funnel" system I made for storing rice in juice bottles. Please see my article - Bottles, Barrels, & a Dry Funnel
Harper
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