Cajun Brown Rice

Actual whole grain brown rice, toasted in the trinity and simmered in stock the way we cook white rice here. A side dish with enough going on to carry the plate.

Prep: 15 min · Cook: 55 min · Serves: 6 · Rice: Brown

Whole Grain, Cooked Like We Cook Rice

This is whole grain brown rice cooked with Cajun technique, which mostly means toasting the grain in fat with the trinity before any liquid goes in. That one step is the difference between seasoned rice and rice with seasoning stirred through it.

A note on the name before anything else. In the South, brown rice often means a baked casserole made with white rice and beef consomme, and that dish has nothing to do with whole grains. We wrote it up separately as Southern brown rice. This recipe uses the real thing.

Our Organic Brown Rice keeps the bran and germ, which is where nearly all the fiber and most of the B vitamins in a grain live. It is certified 100% whole grain, meaning it was a whole grain from the field through our mill in Mer Rouge, and certified organic through CCOF.

Brown rice suits Cajun cooking better than people expect. The nuttiness of the bran sits well against smoked paprika and thyme, and the sturdier grain means it does not turn to mush in a pot with a lot of vegetables in it.

• Toast the rice in the fat for a full two minutes. You want to smell it turn nutty.

• Two cups of stock per cup of dry brown rice, and 45 minutes covered.

• Cut the trinity fine, about the size of a cooked grain, so it disappears into the rice.

• Rest it 10 minutes off the heat before fluffing. Brown rice needs that window more than white does.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups 4Sisters Organic Brown Rice

• 3 cups chicken or vegetable stock

• 3 tbsp unsalted butter or olive oil

• 1 medium yellow onion, diced fine

• 2 ribs celery, diced fine

• 1 green bell pepper, diced fine

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 1/2 tsp Cajun seasoning

• 1 tsp smoked paprika

• 1/2 tsp dried thyme

• 2 bay leaves

• 4 green onions, sliced thin

• 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped

• Kosher salt and black pepper, to taste

Prep

Cut the trinity fine

Dice the onion, celery, and bell pepper small, roughly the size of a cooked grain of rice. In a side dish like this you want them to melt into the background rather than show up as chunks of vegetable. Mince the garlic separately.

Do not rinse the brown rice. There is very little loose surface starch on a whole grain and rinsing only costs you flavor.

Warm the stock

Heat the stock in a saucepan or the microwave until it is steaming. Pouring cold liquid onto toasted rice stops the toasting cold and adds time to the simmer.

Toasting the grain in fat before the liquid is what separates seasoned rice from rice with seasoning stirred in.

Cooking

Soften the trinity

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan or small Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion, celery, and bell pepper with a good pinch of salt and cook 8 to 10 minutes until soft and translucent with a little color at the edges. Add the garlic, Cajun seasoning, smoked paprika, and thyme, and stir for one minute.

Toast the rice

Add the brown rice and stir constantly for 2 full minutes. The grains will look glossy and start smelling toasted and nutty. This is the step that matters most, and two minutes is longer than it feels, so watch the clock rather than guessing.

Simmer 45 minutes

Pour in the warm stock, add the bay leaves, and bring it to a boil. Stir once, cover tightly, and drop the heat to the lowest setting for 45 minutes. Do not lift the lid.

Take it off the heat and let it stand covered another 10 minutes. Remove the bay leaves, fluff with a fork, and fold in the green onions and parsley.

Finished Cajun brown rice should be tender with a slight chew at the center of each grain, which is what brown rice does and is not a fault. The trinity should be barely visible. If the pot is dry but the grains are still hard, add a quarter cup of hot stock, re-cover, and give it 8 more minutes.

Whole grain rice will never be as soft as white, and it is not supposed to be. If someone at your table wants the softer texture, our long grain white rice method takes 23 minutes and the same trinity treatment works on it.

Tip from the farm

Add a half pound of sliced andouille at the start, browned in the pot before the trinity goes in, and this stops being a side dish. Cook everything else in the rendered fat and skip the butter. It is the same move that turns our white rice into dirty rice, and brown rice handles it just as well.

How We Serve It

We put this beside blackened fish, roast chicken, or a pork chop, and it holds its own next to any of them. It also works as the base of a grain bowl with a fried egg and hot sauce, which is what happens to the leftovers most weeks.

Because it is a whole grain, it is more filling than the same volume of white rice. The Whole Grains Council explains what the 100% stamp on our bag requires, and our organic certification is through CCOF.

For the plain whole grain cooking method without the Cajun treatment, see best practices for cooking organic brown rice. To turn this into a full one pot meal, our brown rice jambalaya takes it the rest of the way.

Questions We Get

No, and the naming is genuinely confusing. This recipe uses real whole grain brown rice cooked with the Cajun trinity. Southern brown rice is a baked casserole made with long grain white rice, beef consomme, and French onion soup, named for the color it turns rather than the grain in it. Two different dishes that share a name.

Two cups of liquid per cup of dry brown rice, simmered covered for 45 minutes and rested 10. That is about double the time white rice needs and slightly more liquid, because the bran layer slows absorption. In this recipe the toasting step also drives off a little surface moisture, so do not cut the stock below the 2 to 1 ratio.

It already is if you use vegetable stock and olive oil in place of the butter. The flavor here comes from the toasted grain, the trinity, and the spices rather than from meat, so nothing is missing. Check your Cajun seasoning blend, since a few brands include anchovy or beef powder.