I was trying a recipe for a risotto with peppers using brown rice. The recipe states 30 minutes cooking time after putting in the brown rice and vegetable stock.
After 1 hour however, the rice was still not cooked 100% and there was excess liquid until 45 mins or so.
So have I just got a bad recipe or is there something about brown rice I don’t know?
I’d love to get this one right because apart from the rice it tastes great.
Something sounds very wrong there. I’ve only made risotto once, but I seem to recall it took about thirty minutes of cooking time with white rice. And I’ve tried making a pseudo-jambalaya with brown rice, and after well over an hour of cooking, the rice was still crunchy.
My impression is that brown rice simply doesn’t do well in these low-water, high-fat kinds of recipes: even accounting for the normal longer cooking time for brown rice, it doesn’t seem to do its stuff.
Daniel
Was the rice pre-cooked? If not, I’d say that the fault is in the recipe, as brown rice usually takes 45 min. to cook and they need a bit more water than ordinary white rice. They can be cooked longer, but personally I think they become too mushy then - but you can’t argue about taste 
What kind of brown rice were you using? If you weren’t using brown risotto rice you won’t get that creaminess that one associates with risotto.
Angua is on the right track here. If you are making a risotto with rice, you should use Arborio or other short-grained rice (medium grain will work, but not as well). The cooking time should be around 20 minutes (perhaps longer for brown rice).
The dish should be cooked at about medium heat, or whatever heat makes the liquid continue to perk along at a slow boil. This is not a low-heat dish, and should not be covered while cooking. At the end, you can remove it from the heat and cover for 5-10 minutes to absorb any excess liquid. Hope this helps.
I find that when making risotto, not adding all the liquid at once is a good idea. I add the stock a ladle at a time, making sure that the stock already in the pan’s almost fully absorbed before adding more. It solves the problem of ending up with excess liquid in the pan, and, IME, makes for a creamier risotto.
What Angua describes is the tradtional risotto method. Some cookbooks call any rice-based dish “risotto,” but that’s a misnomer.
In a traditional risotto, you sweat your aromatics (onion, garlic, celery) in olive oil for a few minutes, add the rice (as mentioned, a short-grain, starchy rice like Arborio is best) and stir for a bit, add white wine and stir some more until the wine cooks off, and then start adding your hot stock, a ladleful at a time, stirring continously and adding more stock as each ladleful is absorbed. Should take about 20 minutes; you are working the starch out of the rice to create that yummy creaminess. Top off with butter, parmesan, and whatever veggies/meats you are adding, and you’re good to go!
That’s how I made it. It was incredibly intensely flavored (I made a wild mushroom risotto from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone), too heavy for my tastes, but quite yummy. Arborio rice was an important component, and you added the liquid in half a cup at a time. I can’t imagine how it’d come out with brown rice: if the rice were precooked, it seems like the cooking technique wouldn’t work at all, and if it weren’t precooked, I don’t think the rice would ever absorb enough liquid to be cooked.
Daniel
Indeed it is. The method for a pillau is similar to other methods described here - putting all the stock in at once and then reducing down and cooking the rice at the same time. Of course, with a pillau, the rice+stock+anything else is put into the oven to essentially bake and reduce.
The idea with the risotto is to add the broth a bit at a time, as previously mentionned. IIRC, the starch in the rice needs time to soak into the liquid or something. Doing it all at once would end up with a goopy mess, not the creamy-but-with-a-bite in each grain that you get in a proper risotto. (i’ve tried shortcuts with risotto making. I’d advise against it, as it turns out awful ), I’d imagine that the hull on the brown rice would act as a little raincoat, preventing the liquid and starch from doing their thing.
It’s not clear to me whether the recipe called for brown rice, or that was a substitution you made. If the latter, I would say that’s your problem right there.
I have seen recipes for risotto using brown rice, and there is such a thing as brown risotto rice. However, personally, I’d advise against it, as has been mentioned, the hull of the rice prevents the rice from becoming creamy.
Manduck, the recipe called for brown rice but I used long grain which was maybe a bit wrong. I will use risotto rice from now on!
Also adding the stock gradually seems a great idea, thanks for that Angua.
And be sure to keep stirring! You must plan to literally stand at the stove for 20 minutes, stirring and adding stock. A lot of work but well worth it.
Once you have made risotto you will understand the risotto references in Big Night* much better.