Last weekend we had our final church group meeting before summer and the dinner theme was ‘taco night.’ Upon seeing the signup list, I quickly chose rice and beans…because I love cooking rice and beans. 🙂 They’re cheap, healthy and are easy to ‘doctor up.’
I made 2 lbs. of these Dominican style beans. And then made a giant pot of Tex Mex restaurant style rice (2 lbs. of white rice or 5 cups uncooked).
And everyone was well fed and happy at the party.
But the one who was the happiest about these beans and rice…Cuatro. That kid LOVES, loves, loves beans and rice. He would eat them for every meal if I served them. But we believe in balance, and not inducing too much gas in toddlers…so we serve them once or twice a week.
After eating a third bowl of leftovers, my husband declared that he wanted to start having a weekly beans and rice night…and being the budgetarian that I am, I obliged. So now I just need to decide if we’re going to have rice and beans “every Thursday night” or just make them as I remember to soak them 😉
Anyways, here you go.
AUTHENTIC tex-mex restaurant style rice. Pay close attention to the directions. Because my guess is that you aren’t cooking rice like this. But you might not go back to the ‘directions on the bag’ way every again.
Buen provecho! (Or Bon Appetit in Spanish. Not wait, that’s French. It would be “Enjoy your meal” in English. Whatever, you get the point.)
Buen provecho!
{Please note the serving size below, and that this calls for 2 lbs of rice. It’s easy to 1/2 or 1/4 if you just want to make for a meal. It nearly fills my 6 quart suacepan, as you can see below.}
Tex Mex Restaurant Style Rice
Yield – 12 to 16 servings
Preparation Time – 10 minutes
Cooking Time – 20 minutes
Ingredients
- 4 Tbsp vegetable or canola oil
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 lbs. rice
- 1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
- 4 cups chicken stock (plus water, in directions below!)
- 1 15 oz. can corn, drained
- 1 green pepper, seeded and diced
- Optional, replace the green pepper with 2 cups chopped carrots
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, finely chopped
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- In a large stock pot or saucepan, heat the oil and saute the garlic cloves for no more than 2 minutes. Remove the garlic cloves and then add the rice into the pot with the oil. Stir often until it begins to brown. It will take a few minutes with a larger amount of rice. A smaller portion won’t take as long.
- After a few minutes of the rice browning in the oil, add the chicken stock, tomato sauce, plus 5 cups of water. (I used 11 cups liquid for 5 cups of uncooked rice, 4 cups chicken stock, about 2 cups of the tomato sauce plus the 5 cups of water.) Stir in the corn, the chopped green peppers and the chopped cilantro.
- Bring to bubbling, then cover and let cook for 15-20 minutes, or until rice is cooked and fluffy.
- Serve Tex Mex Restaurant Style Rice with whatever your favorite Tex Mex dish is…refried beans, enchiladas, tacos, etc.
Notes – If making a smaller portion, you could use a smaller amount of frozen corn, so you don’t have to waste part of a can. You could use a smaller can of tomato sauce or even tomato paste and whisk into the stock.water. Adjust the amount of cilantro as well, so it doesn’t overpower the rice! Hope you enjoy!!!
Could you use brown rice instead of white rice?
I was also wondering about how to modify the recipe to use brown rice. We don’t buy white rice anymore.
I’ve made Mexican rice with brown rice, but not this exact recipe. I think if you add an extra 1/2 cup of water per cup of rice and cook for 40-45 mins. instead of 20 it should work fine.
Try subbing 2 oz V-8 juice, 13 ozs water for the tomato sauce. The less tomatoey flavor is more like Tex-Mex to me.
Can this be frozen? I’ll be making it with veggie broth, but wanted to make sure that it’ll freeze well. 🙂
I made this recipe with brown rice and was great.
Could I make this in the instant pot?