12 cups water
1 cup medium-grain brown rice, such as brown Arborio rice
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1. Mix all the ingredients in a large saucepan or Dutch oven; bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to very low, just so the water percolates slowly enough that you can count the bubbles as they form. Cook uncovered for 1½ hours, stirring once in a while.
2. Cover and continue cooking until thick and porridgelike, about 30 more minutes, stirring often now to prevent sticking as the congee thickens.
SERVES 6
Active time: 35 minutes
Total time: 2 hours 15 minutes
MAKE IT EASIER!
CHEF IT UP!
TESTERS’ NOTES
Now we turn to more elaborate breakfasts. True, some aren’t too involved—like the whole-grain waffle mix you can have in the pantry and whip up anytime. Still, the sun doesn’t rise and shine on make-aheads. Some of these recipes are probably best for a weekend morning, like the Cinnamon-Raisin Barley Pudding or the Quinoa Date Bread. But who could argue with Oat and Amaranth Pancakes just about any morning? Or evening? And you just have to try the Breakfast Polenta Cake!
As we’ve said, whole grains are so foundational to who we are as humans, they’ve become standard morning fare, probably the one chance some of us have to eat a whole grain in our rush-rush world. Unfortunately, almost any whole grain has an Achilles heel. The germ is loaded with polyunsaturated fats, a prime candidate for going rancid. The bran is stocked with fiber, which then locks rot-inducing moisture right against the germ. It’s a recipe for trouble—or spoilage.
To solve the problem, industrial processing gives the germ and bran a Mafia whack. Remove only the hull and the grains can stick around a year. That fit the bill for our ancestors who were trying to get through one winter at a time. But remove the germ and bran as well and it can last a lot longer.
Although there are nutritional issues involved with removing the bran and the germ, let’s focus on the culinary ones. By leaving just the endosperm, we simplify a whole grain’s complex flavor palette until it’s little more than baldly saccharine. We then don’t experience the earthiness, the inherent savoriness, the complex but subtle balance of flavors, sophisticatedly pure but with a coarse, rustic streak as well.
Given that grains are a part of our morning routines, we’re left with a start-the-day impulse for them without its proper fulfillment. We pull out boxes of grain-based cereals, few of which offer whole grains themselves—or even taste like grains at all. We reach for that cinnamon-raisin Danish in the morning, partly because of the sugar that jolts us awake, but also because we have always woken up to grains, albeit now depressingly monochromatic in their refined forms.
Face it: Humans eat a lot. Several times a day. We’re trying to stoke the fire in our heads—that is, our brains. To run those complex machines up top, we need to give them a steady supply of ready energy. We don’t do our best work when we’re hungry.
But we can’t stoke the fire before we build it. Our palates need to wake up, even before our brains. Our mouths lead to our guts, which lead to our heads. And here’s where grains play a gustatory role. They’re not a big whap up side the head first thing in the morning, like a roasted pork shoulder or a braise of oxtails. Instead, they’re gentler, subtler, more in keeping with the morning hours. More Ellen than True Blood.
Yes, we’ve gone too far. We’ve taken those delicate, muted cues of what were the foundation crops for human civilization, refined the grains to last even longer, and so morphed the flavors until they’re no more than a slick of sweet on the tongue. But behind it all, we know that real taste, the whole-grain taste: the gentle balance of earthy and sweet, the perfect way to start the day.
We’ve always known it, since the dawn of human history. Sometimes it’s great to have that reminder in the form of a simple make-ahead granola or muesli. But other times, it’s important to give whole grains the full treatment, more culinary folderol—like this Barley Grits Breakfast Casserole with Apples and Sausage or these muffins stocked with quinoa and cashews. They are celebrations of whole grains. And some of the best reasons to get out of bed.