Recipe: Boiled Rice

and to help you understanding rice, here is a post i did a while back. Though the ariticle isn't about brown rice, it gives you a general idea about rice. since brown rice is coarser and harder, the soaking time should be a bit longer as well. hope this helps.

eggy/m'isa
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Title: Boiled rice (Gohan)
Posted By: eggy/oz
Date: May 31st 1999
In Reply to: G'day there Eggy
Board: What a Great Idea! - Tips and Tricks Center

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This is very long but rather interesting. If you are into RICE, pls. spend a bit of time here to read it. Maybe I shall post it elsewhere?
Just want to share...
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Japanese Cooking - A Simple Art p. 273 -276
by Shizuo Tsuji, introduced by M. F. K. Fisher

Boiled rice (Gohan)

Allow 1/2 cup uncooked rice per serving. Short-grain rice expand about 75 percent in cooking, long-grain rice even more.
Whether using an automatic rice cooker or boiling rice in a pot, always wash rice 30 minutes to 1 hour beforehand and let it drain in the open air in a colander. To wash, put rice in a large bowl and se it in the sink for convenience. Cover rice with cold water from the tap and stir quickly with your hands for about 30 seconds, till the water become milky. Never let the rice stand in this milky water. The milkiness comes from powdered bran and polishing compound, which is exactly what should be washed away. Pour off milky water and wash again with fresh water from the tap. Repeatedly wash this way till water is almost clear. It takes about 5 minutes of washing, pouring off, and washing or clean rice sufficiently. The penalty for rice washed too hastily is "smelly" rice. Stir more gently in later washings than at first in order not to bruise grains. The grains, absorbing more and more water with every washing, become tenderer. (There is another common method of letting rice rest for 1 hour or more in water you will cook it in. The colander-draining technique is thought to result in better flavor.)
Put the rice in a tight-lidded, heavy and deep pot. Use a pot that is neither too large nor to small for the quantity of rice you are cooking. Cooked in too large a pot, the rice will be dry, perhaps even scorched. Cooked in too small a pot, the rice will be tacky.
It is difficult to prescribe an exact formula for the size of pot and the amount of water to use in cooking rice because there are so many variables. Assuming that our interest is only in short-grain rice, we still must consider whether it was grown in a flooded paddy or dry field, whether the rice is newly harvested or whether it has already been on the shelf for some time, whether the climate is hot and muggy or desert dry. These are all factors that the rice chef, with a many-year training period, would have no trouble in dealing with. And, they need not bother anyone very much. For family meals, a medium-sized, heavy saucepan is sufficient.
As a general but flexible rule, use enough water to cover the rice in a proper-sized pot by 1 inch (2 1/2 cm), or keep in mind these formulas:
with rice of Asian origin (usually grown in wet fields) - 1 1/5 cups water to 1 cup dry rice.
Short-grain rice is less absorbent than long-grain rice, and new rice requires less water than old rice. In cooking only a few serving of rice, use more water to keep rice from getting too dry. If, when hard pressed for time, you cannot let the rice stand before cooking, add a bit more water than you would normally use. Only experience and your own taste can be your ultimate guide. You may decide to cook rice in broth or stock instead of water in order to obtain a particular flavor.
To cook, place rice in tightly covered pot over medium-high heat till water just boils. Then turn heat up to high, and let water come to a vigorous boil; the lid might bounce from the pressure of the steam. A white, starchy liquid will bubble from under the pot lid. When this starchy bubbling ceases, reduce heat to low and cook till all the liquid is absorbed by the rice. Do not lift the cover off the pot during cooking.
Turn off the heat (do not take pot off burner) and let rice stand, covered, 15 - 20 minutes before fluffing. During this interval, the grains are allowed to "settle," and the cooking process is completed by the heat retained in the rice and the walls of the pot. With a wooden paddle or spoon, fluff the rice with a sideways, cutting motion. Stretch a kitchen towel underneath the pot lid to catch moisture, then return lid to pot. Let stand till ready to serve.
Serve in individual rice bowls. In Japanese households, hot rice is customarily not served directly from the pot, even though today the design of the automatic rice cooker has induced some people to do this. The traditional practice is to bring the rice to the table in a covered wooden container or wooden paddle. For some reasons custom dictates that each serving be made sin two vulgar to fill the rice bowls too full. The more refined the banquet, the smaller the serving of rice. Wooden rice tubs (usually cedar or cypress) are best because they absorb moisture and keep the rice warm. The lacquer containers one sees are luxury items made for decorative effect. They are used in inns and restaurants and are not as practical as the wooden tubs.
If you are making a large quantity of rice at once, you should alter the techniques described above slightly. Place washed rice into a hot pot with water already boiling. Stir once and cover tightly. Bring to a boil again (over high heat), then follow the conventional technique as described above.
A crusty brown scorch on the bottom of the rice is no catastrophe, in fact, some people do this on purpose. (A black, smelly burn, however, will probably make all the rice smell burnt and make it unusable.) In Japanese families there is always someone (maybe everyone) who loves to snack on scorched rice, called okoge - literally, "scorch." Some people like its crunchiness so much that they deliberately scorch rice to use in making rice balls or tea-and-rice.