Brown Rice...in bulk!

I have transitioned our family entirely to brown rice, with the exception of Chinese take-out and my chicken and rice casserole, and done so without too much pain.  Except for how bloody long it takes brown rice to cook.  45 minutes?  Seriously?  I don't want to spend that kind of time for rice.  Months ago, I found precooked brown rice at Trader Joe's that took 3 minutes to reheat in the microwave...3 minutes!  Now we are talking.

The problem...I was paying a lot for the convenience.  So, I started looking for a way that I would be able to get the brown rice I wanted to eat in the time I wanted it for a price that works better.  (Typing that out makes me sound kind of snotty.)

I found a blog that had a recipe that was SUPER easy using a crockpot.   I tried it last week and it was excellent!  The recipe had more spices and oil than I wanted to use (it was for a specific recipe) but I took the basic ratio for a crockpot, which was really what I was looking for, and it worked great!  For some reason I thought I would need to be different in the crockpot.  :/

Clearly it is nothing fancy, but it worked so well I thought I would write it up and see if it might help anyone else.

Ingredients:
olive oil spray (I used my Misto)
5 cups of brown rice
10 cups of water

Directions:
1. Spray the bottom and sides of the crockpot with the olive oil spray (I suppose you could use whatever you wanted.)
2.  Add rice and water to the crockpot and mix.
3.  Turn on high for three hours.  At this time turn off the crockpot and check on it every once and awhile until the water it absorbed.  Fluff it up a bit so that the rice at the bottom doesn't turn into rice paste.
4.  Cool the rice in the fridge overnight (I just waited until my crockpot was not really hot and then just stuck that in the fridge).
5.  The next day, break up the rice and then package it up in whatever size you want and put it in the freezer.  The next time you need some, just take it out and reheat in the microwave until warm enough.


We had brown rice with a stir-fry on the day that I made it and then I packaged up leftovers for two days for me.  Then I had 9 bags of about 2 cups each of brown rice to put in the freezer!  Amazing!