I was thinking about using a brown rice in paella for a long time. Couple of days ago i took a plunge.
Mushrooms are always a great companion to brown rice and i had some nice king oyster ones. And chorizo (in reality it was some sort of portuguese lomo instead of chorizo in a fridge).
King oysters responds well to brown first braise after treatment but i coudn’t decide how to cut them for an appropriate texture – the choice was among tearing into strings, cutting into rounds or dicing. And then i had an epiphany – duxelles of course!
I decided to soak the rice to shorten the cooking time. Didn’t help – it took the usual 50mins in 350F oven. Next time i will add the meat and mushrooms about 20mins before the finish. And the rice/water ratio should have been 1/2 not 1/1.75 (my standard brown rice formula) due to higher evaporation.
My brown rice of choice is Massa Organics though next time i might try some Lundberg – they have excellent rice mixes.
