It has been a long held belief that, like fast versus slow cooking oatmeal, that slow cooking brown rice is healthier and may maintain more nutrients and fiber as well as have a lower glycemic index than it’s sister, the quick cooking brown rice. Fast cooking brown rice pretty much cuts the cook time down less than half the time it takes to cook whole brown rice, which is about one hour or a little less to get it cooked until it’s just right and tender enough to eat.
Studies were actually done by independent labs that showed that fast cooking and slow cooking brown rice really did not differ in the vitamins and minerals they contained, and they also had a somewhat surprising find as well. They found that fast cooking brown rice actually had a slightly lower glycemic index than it’s slower cooking counterpart. Why that would be, who knows!
However, it’s important to note that it was a really significant amount, so go ahead and keep slow cooking your brown rice if that’s the way you prefer it. I know that I like slow cooking brown rice because it is easy to throw in a rice cooker and get a fantastic tasting, just right and tender outcome, and you just throw it in that rice cooker does it all for you.
I actually also like to slow cook my brown rice because I put some seasonings in the water it’s being cooked in, and this allows those savory spices to better soak into the rice and make a more flavorful side dish.
Brown rice is a great way to get several nutrients into your diet, and it has actually been studied and proven that it is beneficial compared to white rice because it lowers the overall rate of diabetes in people that consume it, while white rice does the opposite, it actually increases blood sugar rates and therefore raises risk of diabetes.
The vitamins and minerals that brown rice offers, whether slow of fast cooked are manganese, magnesium which is excellent for keeping your ticker going at the right amount of beats and keeping it “well timed” shall we say, selenium, which is only found in trace amounts in most foods, and of course, dietary fiber, which brown rice is a great source of.
Brown rice, while healthy, is still a significant source of carbohydrates though, so you don’t want to totally over do it on the stuff. Reasonable portions, maybe once or twice a week are good enough to provide you with the potential health benefits it offers. It makes a great side dish to things like lean grilled fish or chicken and a big pile of veggies too, and it’s very satiating to the appetite and can help suppress hunger for hours after consumption.
