(This episode titled ironically, by the actor Tim Robbins.)

Rice. Brown rice. Organic brown rice. Yes, very healthy. Generally.

The major caveat is that rice is very good at sucking up arsenic from the soil. Normally the amounts are small and it’s at worst a modest problem. However, rice grown in Texas and the southern US is a potentially dangerous exception.

It turns out that southern rice is usually grown in fields that used to grow cotton, which of course isn’t food. So to poison insects in these cotton fields, they used a lot of arsenic. And the arsenic is still present in the soil twenty and thirty and forty years later at high levels. Meaning that no matter how organic it claims to be or even is–you don’t want it, because the high arsenic levels will end up in your pot and then your body. The soil was fucked over and will continue to be regardless of the ‘greenness’ of any latter-day cultivation methods.

California, like most of the US West, has some naturally occurring arsenic. Asian rice generally has none, but their standards for ‘organic’ aren’t as verifiably stringent either.

There are things you can do to reduce arsenic levels, and I do some of them, with my California rice from Lundberg Family Farms (not a sponsor). Here’s my process.

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Use relatively fresh rice, two years old or less. I buy in bulk through Azure and keep a big food-grade bucket full, with the date noted on it, and then a smaller glass jar that holds a week’s worth or so for ready use.

Soak it overnight. I do two cups of rice at a time, with around four cups of water.

In the morning, drain it and rinse it. I use a large strainer for this. Put the rinsed rice in your pot.

For every cup of brown rice you started with, add 1.5 cups water to the pot, give it a stir, and bring it all to a boil.

After letting the boil roll for a minute or two, reduce the heat to a simmer and cover the pot. Leave it to simmer for the next fifteen minutes or so at least.

After a while, take a spoon and dig a hole in the middle of the rice all the way to the bottom. You’ll probably see some water down there. What you want is for that water to be very-nearly-but-not-quite gone. Keep simmering until it is so. Then remove it from the heat completely.

Let it rest for at least ten minutes to let the remaining steam do the remaining cooking.

Fluff it with a fork if you like, but you’re done.

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The other method I sort of find plausible, especially for reducing arsenic levels even further, is to boil your rice like pasta, with 8 or 10 cups of water for every cup of rice. But I haven’t tried it, because I’m trying to do everything as simply and minimally as possible, in conditions where it might cost a lot to haul in water liberally. For the same minimalist reasons, I don’t use oil or salt or anything else, even though plenty of sources recommend one or both.

Salt and other flavors will come from the masala or curry sauce that pours over the rice.

I’ll talk about that part tomorrow.