Thursday, August 26, 2010

Low-fat vegan Mexican-style rice

This accompanies the slowcooked refried beans I posted yesterday. This particular batch is a result of an oops. It calls for a dash of liquid smoke and instead it got a dump. So we just added more rice.

1 medium onion, chopped
1 large each yellow and red pepper, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced or grated
2 cups cooked rice , cook the rice in the liquid from the beans
1 t each chili powder and cumin (adjust for taste)
1/2 t each basil, oregano, marjoram, sage
1/4 t allspice
2 large tomatoes, chopped
1 small can sliced black olives (optional)
1 small can diced green chilies
few shakes of Tabasco type hot sauce, or to your liking
1 T lime juice
DASH of mesquite liquid smoke
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper to taste


Cook the rice in the reserved bean liquid for the amount of time listed for the rice. Just use as you would water, you could of course use water or veggie broth if you wish. Meanwhile prep the rest of the veggies, spices and such. When the rice is almost done, start cooking the first 3 ingredients in a small amount of water. Mix in the cooked rice and all the dry spices, the next three ingredient lines, mix very well. Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Cook for about 5 mins.


Because of our oops, we added about 2 cups more rice to even out the dump of liquid smoke. By using the reserved liquid from the beans this added a very rich flavor to the rice. Because this was my husband's recipe, we used white rice. He is not fond of brown rice at all, while I am not fond of white. I think it smells and tastes like Elmer's glue. This liquid hid the glue like taste. I think it would add to the lovely flavor of brown rice quite nicely.

Edited to add: I wanted to make a notation that if you use brown rice with the cooking liquid from the beans, it will caramelize on the bottom of the pan. We just made a new batch of rice, 1/2 white and 1/2 brown.

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