The Best (& Healthiest) Rice Recipe
Everyone's Favorite Rice Recipe
Ingredients
Instructions
what makes this rice the best & the healthiest.
The process is simple
I find that mixing the liquid, rice, oil, and salt in the beginning before bringing it all to a boil provides a more consistent flavor. It's also just really simple to bring it all to a boil, reduce the heat, and wait for the liquid to absorb.
Nutrient profile
This rice is more nutrient and mineral-dense because of the bone broth, salt, and coconut oil.
Coconut Oil
The coconut oil adds a very appealing texture to the rice. It doesn't quite make it sweet, or super coconutty, but if you don’t like coconut, you can also do 50/50 coconut oil and butter. You can also swap the coconut oil for butter completely—or any oil you like. However, I recommend coconut oil because I think it works the best.
Coconut oil and butter are healthy fats compared to oils like canola oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, and other oils that fall into the category of high-PUFA seed oils. Seed & vegetable oils are marketed for lowering cholesterol and being "healthy" but they are high in linoleic acid. New research finds these oils increase your risk of heart disease and inflammation. Cholesterol is actually not the enemy when it comes to heart disease, but I won't get into all that in this rice post, I will save that for a later blog post. Personally, in our house, we only cook with butter, beef tallow, coconut oil, avocado oil, and lard.
Bone broth
Bone broth is extremely healthy and supports many things like bone and joint health, gut health, weight loss, and skin health—it's a staple in my house.
It has vitamins A, B, K2, and minerals like zinc, iron, calcium, and selenium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, and sodium. It also contains protein, which can help build bones, muscles, cartilage, skin, and blood. When cooked, the protein collagen turns into gelatin, which contains amino acids like glycine, glutamine, proline, and arginine
I like to make homemade bone broth these days, and I have a recipe in the making. But in the past I’ve used Zoup's Beef Bone Broth because there are slightly fewer ingredients than other broths.
I’ve come to learn the more gelatinous the bone broth is when it’s cooled the more nutrient-dense. So I’m not sure Zoup’s is the most nutrient-dense considering it’s very watery when refrigerated, but you can use any bone broth you want, chicken, beef, or a combination of the two.
Redmonds Real Salt
Sodium is a mineral that is essential for many functions in the body, such as fluid balance, nerve transmission, and muscle contraction. Some salts have more mineral content than others. I use Redmond's Real Salt, which has more than 60 natural trace minerals.
how to make it low-glycemic rice.
Meal prep it! Once rice cools and is reheated it becomes a resistant starch.
Resistance starch supports a healthy gut biome and reduces the glycemic index of foods like rice, or potatoes. That means it doesn’t spike your blood sugar as much. Resistant starch can also improve the body's responsiveness to insulin, and it promotes weight loss by boosting thermogenesis, which is the rate at which your body burns calories. It also increases the production of satiety peptides, which helps you feel fuller for longer.
This is why I make a large pot and use it throughout the week. It’s the only food that actually becomes healthier when it is reheated. Plus it also reduces the amount of time it takes to make dinner.
So enjoy your fresh rice on the first day, but after that, enjoy it as resistant starch until it's gone.
how to reheat.
To reheat it throughout the week, I throw as much rice as I want in a frying pan or pot with a little more bone broth or coconut oil and cook until it's heated and absorbed.
