I realized quickly into planning the recipe portion of the blog that you need to know a few basic basic recipes before you can tackle most Mexican meals. This series will cover said basic recipes including major side dishes and salsas. In future posts, I intend to refer back to these so you are likely to see them again.
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| Mexican Rice- An Improvised Apartment Photoshoot |
Ingredients:
2 cups of water
1 ½ cups of long grain white rice
1 medium clove of garlic
1 medium roma tomato
½ medium yellow onion
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
¼ teaspoon of salt
1 cube of Knorr Caldo con Sabor de Pollo seasoning or 1 packet of Sazon Goya
Preparation time: approx 5 minutes
Cooking time: approx 15 minutes
Mexican rice is second to beans when it comes to important Mexican side dishes. I have to say this recipe is easy to make, but also easy to mess up. Don’t be discouraged if it takes you a few tries to get it right. After a while, you’ll be able to make this in your sleep.
The first step will be to make a sort of sauce you cook the rice in (you’ll use the vegetables for this.) You start by getting the tomato and onion ready. Cut the tomato horizontally and vertically so that you end up with four pieces. Make sure your blender can handle the size of the pieces. Otherwise, you should make them smaller. Next, peel and cut a medium yellow onion in half. Then, cut it in half again. Put the onion and the tomato in the blender with the clove of garlic. Add the salt and 1 ½ cups of water. Blend the mixture using any setting that will liquefy the ingredients.
Next, you want to start on the rice. Heat the oil in a pan on a high setting. Wait until the oil has expanded and released a scent to stir in the rice. Coat the rice evenly in the oil. Stir the rice as it heats up, so that it doesn’t stick to the pan. The rice will be ready once it turns white. You can keep stirring it longer and wait until some of the grains turn golden brown for some extra flavor.
Turn the heat down to a medium setting. Add the onion and tomato sauce to the pan. Then, stir the rice and add the Knorr or the Goya seasoning (not both.) The beauty of this recipe is that you can dress it up with with these seasonings and make it a little different every time you have it.
Put the lid on the pan. Stir the rice as needed to blend the flavor and to keep it from sticking to the pan. After three minutes, add ½ cup of water and stir the rice so that the seasoning stays even. Then, let it cook under the lid. Stir every so often. It will be done when it loses most of the water content. Do a taste test to make sure it is soft enough to eat.
Makes 8 to 10 servings
