When you visit a link in this article that takes you to a different website where you can purchase something, I may earn a commission. Read my full disclosure for more details.
Rice is one of the many staples in our home. We eat it 2-3 times a week, and we love brown, white, jasmine, and arborio especially. Most people will tell you that rice is great for food storage, especially white, due to it’s long storage life, and I would have to completely agree. It’s fairly easy to cook, and even without a special rice cooker, you really are hard pressed to mess it up.
So, why on earth would you want to spend time and energy making instant rice?
Well, several reasons. One, is a time factor for us. There are just some nights that taking 30 minutes to wait for rice to be done can push dinner to past 8:00 PM. (this is after evening activities that the kids have). And two, what if the power was out and you needed something fairly nutritious and filling to feed your family?
Conserving what you have for cooking power is important in this situation. We have a propane stove, but I don’t want to spend 30 minutes cooking rice on it. Why not just buy instant rice at the store? Well, I am able to get a 50# bag of organic brown rice for only $13. That beats the instant rice prices, hands down.
Making instant rice from regular rice isn’t hard to do.
You simply need to take a large pot, add in rice and water. For this demonstration, I used our brown rice. I added 8 cups of rice and 20 cups of water and set it to simmer and cook. This took about 45 minutes to finish completely.
Once it was cooked, I took it off the heat to cool. It’s much easier to handle cooler rice than hot rice, trust me. Spread it on dehydrator sheets like these and place in your dehydrator. I use the Excalibur dehydrator and it was worth every single penny!
Set the temp to 145° and allow to dehydrate for 24 hours. There were a couple pieces that had not completely dried, so when I took the rice out I put those back in. You do not want ANY moisture in this at all, or you could have spoilage.
And, you have just completed making instant rice!
Once it’s completely dry, you’ll want to break it up a bit as you are placing it in your storage. You can store this in glass jars, in ziplock bags, or in a vacuum sealed bag. As long as there is no moisture in this, the shelf life should be about the same. I use mine up within 3-6 months, however and keep a rotating stock of it.
Cooking instant rice is easy, just add equal amounts of rice and hot water.
(I use 2 cups for my family) Simmer for 5-10 minutes until tender. It’s delicious! You can also use this in place of any instant rice that is called for in a recipe.
Have you ever tried making instant rice before? Will you try this recipe? What would you use it in? Be sure to pin this for later, too!
Heather’s homesteading journey started in 2006, with baby steps: first, she got a few raised beds, some chickens, and rabbits. Over the years, she amassed a wealth of homesteading knowledge, knowledge that you can find in the articles of this blog.
Learn more about Heather and the rest of the writers on this page.
I definitely will try this for camping. I love saving money! I generally use a pressure cooker to cook rice. When I’m really in a hurry i will turn on my burner (electric) as I am filling up the pan with use hottest tap water and rice, put the pan on the burner while I lock the lid and place the jiggler. Takes 7 minutes. 1 minute to come up to pressure, 5 to cook, 1 minute to cool down and release pressure. Even when I’m not in such a hurry it only takes a few minutes more. For a large amount of rice that you don’t have to pay very much attention too (and of course you can’t be in a hurry) I use a crock pot. When the house starts to smell like rice I know it’s close to being done. I also freeze rice for quick suppers.