Mexican rice

So, yesterday I received a call from my Niece Christine. She wanted me to post a recipe for Mexican rice. Mexican rice is a little different from Spanish rice just in case you didn’t already know that. It’s pretty simple and quick to make.

You need:

3 tablespoons of oil

1 cup of rice

1 teaspoon of garlic salt

½ teaspoon of cumin

¼ cup onion, chopped

½ cup tomato sauce

2 cups of chicken broth

Now, before I go any further… The above ingredients listed are the standard for Mexican rice. But I should clarify that when I make Mexican rice I usually use Rotel diced tomatoes with green chiles. I love the flavor and heat it imparts to the rice. As I was gathering together everything I needed, I chose to grab stewed tomatoes out of my refrigerator since I needed to use them up. I just ran them through my blender for a minute to get tomato sauce.

There are some basic steps that you should do before you even begin making rice. First, you need to rinse the starch off of the rice. This helps so that after your rice has cooked it will not be sticky and will fluff up with a fork. Honestly, I do not mind my rice sticky so I sometimes skip this step. Secondly, let the rinsed rice dry out before frying.

Now we are ready to make some Mexican rice!

First thing is to grab a pan with a fitted lid (remove the lid until later). Then heat up some oil in your pan. Add your rice and cook, stirring constantly, until the rice begins to puff and turn golden. What does that mean?? In layman’s terms it simply means you want it to lose the iridescence and turn whiter. I like my rice to have that nutty golden color so I sauté it a few minutes longer.

I then sprinkle on my garlic salt and cumin along with my onions and cook until the onions begin to soften or turn tender.

Add the tomato sauce and broth. Stir to incorporate everything and bring to a boil. Once the rice begins to boil, TURN THE HEAT DOWN TO A SIMMER, cover the pan and set your timer for twenty (20) minutes. Do not open the pan during that time to stir or peek inside. You want the steam to do it’s magic and cook your rice.

When the timer goes off use a fork to fluff up the rice and you’re ready to eat.

Additional notes…There are many variations to Mexican rice.

• Often you will see it with a sprinkle of peas and carrots to add color, flavor, and texture.
• A variety of tomato products are used instead of the traditional tomato sauce (like I said earlier, I almost always use diced tomatoes and green chiles).
• If you don’t keep cumin in your pantry you can substitute taco seasoning but you’ll need quite a bit more.
• And speaking of cumin… you can find it in your spice aisle at the grocery store, but it’s cheaper in the Mexican aisle… don’t ask me why (or you can pick it up at the 99 cent store, sold in a bag in the spice aisle as well).
• If you choose to use water and add Knorr chicken bouillon to make your broth, keep in mind that adds sodium to the rice so, adjust the amount of garlic salt or just sauté garlic and omit the salt altogether. If you just use plain water you may need to add more salt to achieve the flavor you want.
• And I just wanted to note that rice generally cooks in twenty (20) minutes... whether you're cooking one cup of rice or three. At the very most you will not cook it longer than twenty-five (25) minutes.

Happy Eating!!