No, I don’t cook the rice in the hot tub. I call this the hot tub brown rice recipe because it allows us to get in the hot tub before dinner while rice is cooking — with no worries and no scorched rice or pans.

I was cooking dinner a little while ago, and my husband Kelly was out, at a meeting with someone. I decided to cook up a big batch of long grain brown rice and I wasn’t sure how much water to add for long grain. So I googled “how to cook brown rice” and discovered a completely different way to cook brown rice, whether  long, short, or medium grain.

It’s really easy too. You get out however much rice you want to cook, and you don’t even need to measure it exactly. Let’s say it looks like you have about a cup. Then you put at least four times as much water in your saucepan, again not needing to measure exactly. You wait until the water comes to a boil and then you add the brown rice.

Once the water comes to a boil again, you may want to turn it down a little but you want a good boil. The recipe I was following said to boil the rice for half an hour uncovered. I didn’t notice the uncovered part and used the lid, but I did turn the heat down so nothing boiled over.

Then it was into the hot tub for a relaxing break. I did already have the rest of the meal cooking too, not being wild about standing around the kitchen after turning my bones to mush in the tub.

Back in the kitchen, it had been 40 minutes since the rice started boiling but we are at 8000 feet, which means water boils at a lower temperature and things take longer. I tasted the rice and it seemed fine.

So then you drain the rice into a colander or strainer over the sink and then put the rice back in the pot, which now has the heat turned off under it. You put the lid back on for about ten minutes and your rice is ready. The boiling cooked it and the last ten minutes of steaming fluffs it up.

I think this will be my default way to cook brown rice. Maybe other grains too…