Restaurant-Style Mexican Rice

[topaz119]

I've had this tab open on my phone for a couple of months and Wednesday seemed to be the night for something new but not complicated. So, Restaurant-Style Mexican Rice it was.

I made a couple of adjustments:

I didn't puree the onion with the tomatoes, partially b/c the thought of pureed raw onion makes me gag, but also b/c this isn't high cuisine and the thought of dirtying the blender just seemed overkill. So, I cut the onion somewhere between a dice and a mince and sauteed it with the rice (I started the onion first and then a minute or two later added the rice to toast it.)

I also cut the tomatoes up (literally--I used my kitchen shears in the can itself.)

Since the recipe called for only 2 cups of tomatoes, I used a 14 oz can rather than the 28 oz that would have left me with a random bit of tomatoes to hang out in the refrigerator and go bad before I used them again. The smaller can gave me a little more than 1.5 cups. I made up the rest of the necessary liquid with additional chicken broth.

I also did not heat the tomatoes to boiling but I did boil the water I used to make the chicken broth (Better Than Bouillon, ftw, always.) Another pan less to clean.

We are on a sodium-restricted diet around here, so I didn't add any additional salt.

I didn't measure but I'm pretty sure I added more than a 1/2 tsp of cumin -- that seems ridiculously small for what's essentially a quart of cooking liquid. I think you could also just use regular chili powder if you didn't have cumin.

Verdict: Really good! It smelled lovely as it simmered, I thought it was pretty good as I tasted to adjust the seasoning at the end, but then one of the kids took a taste and it got a "oh, that's tasty" as he fixed his plate.

I served it on the side with some quickly sauteed chicken breasts for the meat eaters and a thrown-together black bean, onion, and grilled corn (from TJ's freezer section, it's the best) sautee for the veggie-lovers. Definitely will make this again.

Comments

[libbi]

Oh this sounds really good! Thanks for sharing. I like your adjustments. I also try to make things more efficient in dish usage as I have very little space to cook.

This actually would have been a good base for the dish I made last night, so I'll be bookmarking it for the future!

[topaz119]

Hah, yeah, I thought multiple pots and pan for *rice* was a little bit excessive. I'm so tired of doing dishes these days!