There's rice, and then there's rice

Recipes: Brown and wild rice with vegetables

I read an article in a magazine recently about rice. Why is rice so uninteresting as a side dish? Granted, plain rice is just the right thing under an Indian curry or a wonderfully spicy Thai dish, but as a side dish with meat and vegetables? Meh. Not so much.

The premise of the article (wish I could remember which magazine, but I can't) was that "enhanced" rice, as in a pilaf, is obviously more tasty than plain rice because it contains flavorful ingredients, like vegetables and herbs. And that this enhancing is easy to do. In fact there's a kind of formula you can use to enhance any kind of rice or combination of rices. Here's basically how it works.

• Saute finely chopped aromatics (vegetables) in oil or butter, or a combination of both, until they are tender and barely browned. A good choice to start would be onions, carrots, and possibly garlic. Worth considering as a future experiment would be zucchini, celery, butternut squash, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, kale, or any other vegetable you like.
• Add the rice and saute it with the aromatics for a few minutes, until it smells nutty. Perhaps add a little dry white wine at this point, and cook it until it is absorbed.
• Use broth instead of water - chicken, beef, vegetable, mushroom - to give it more flavor. Heat the broth and add it to the pot. Turn the heat down immediately to low and cover the pot.
• Once the rice is tender, turn the heat off and leave the pot covered on the stove for at least 15 minutes before serving.
• Stir chopped fresh herbs, like parsley or oregano, into the rice before serving. Only fresh will work; if you want to use dried herbs, add them sparingly with the vegetables at the beginning.

Using these principles, I cooked rice for us to eat with salmon and steamed carrots and brussels sprouts the other day. It was so good we kept reaching for more rice, and almost forgot to eat the delicious wild salmon!

Brown and Wild Rice

• 1 cup raw rice. I used a combination brown-and-wild-rice I bought at Trader Joe's. You can use any rice you like. Brown rice takes about 45 minutes to cook, wild rice takes a little longer so I cooked this combo for nearly an hour. White rice takes about 20 minutes to cook. You can definitely lift up the lid after it's been cooking for awhile and taste a grain. That, and whether the liquid has been absorbed, is the best way to tell if your rice is nearly done.
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups chicken broth, heated (or use vegetable broth or mushroom broth to keep it vegetarian). Brown rice takes more liquid than white rice, which would only require 1-1/2 cups broth for 1 cup rice. Even so, when I lifted the lid of my pot after 45 minutes, I noticed there was still a lot of liquid and a grain of rice tasted nearly done. What did I do? Of course I poured off most of the liquid into the sink, using the pot lid to keep the rice in the pot. Then I put it back on the burner on low, covered it again, and cooked it for another 10 minutes or so, until all the liquid had been absorbed. Rice is not fragile!
• 1 carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• A splash of dry white wine
• A handful of fresh parsley leaves, chopped

 Melt the butter in a medium Dutch oven and add the olive oil. Saute the chopped onion and carrot in it over medium heat until the vegetables are soft and just beginning to brown.
Add the rice and stir well to combine. Saute, stirring, until the rice heats and begins to smell nutty. Add the wine and cook, stirring, until the wine is absorbed.

Meanwhile, heat the broth almost to boiling on the stove or in the microwave. Turn the heat down on the rice and add all the broth at once. Be careful, the broth could boil up. The idea is to heat the rice enough that the broth keeps its heat when it's added, which helps the rice cook without getting too mushy.

Cover the pot and turn the burner down to low. Set the timer for 45 minutes (in this case, since we're using brown and wild rice).

At 45 minutes, lift the cover and check to see whether the liquid has been absorbed. Taste a grain of rice to see if it is soft. If there is still quite a bit of liquid and the rice appears to be nearly cooked, pour some of it off, taking care to use the lid to keep the rice in the pot. Then re-cover and continue to cook over low heat until the rice is done and the liquid has been absorbed.

Turn the heat off and let sit, covered, for 15 minutes while you finish any other dinner preparations. When you are ready to serve the rice, stir in the chopped parsley.

Buon appetito!

This recipe for rice is both vegetarian and gluten-free.