Restaurant Style Mexican Rice
Last week we enjoyed some delicious fajitas at our house made with a homemade fajita seasoning recipe. It was the perfect opportunity to try a new recipe for a Restaurant Style Mexican Rice that turned out to be a great complimentary side dish to the fajita flavors.
My usual way to create a spanish rice type of dish is to use salsa (you can find that recipe here: 3 Ways To Jazz Up Plain Rice). This new recipe is a little different and uses your own spices, a can of chicken broth, and some tomato sauce.
The original recipe had you toasting the rice in a saucepan first. I opted to skip that step and just follow my usual rice cooking method.
Uh Oh. Did that mean I wasn’t doing it restaurant style ?? Hmmm. Not sure.
The recipe also called for a 1/2 cup of tomato sauce. An 8 oz can of tomato sauce is closer to 3/4 cup, and because I’m just too darn practical and couldn’t stand to be wasteful, I went ahead and dumped the entire can of sauce in anyway. It still turned out great.
The fresh cilantro is what really gives this dish its authentic Mexican-style flavor. You could probably substitute dried cilantro, but the fresh cilantro adds a really nice touch.
Here’s the method I used:
RESTAURANT STYLE MEXICAN RICE
(Adapted from Favorite Family Recipes )
Ingredients:
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1 – 14 oz can of chicken broth
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1 – 8 oz can of tomato sauce (or 1/2 cup)
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1/2 teaspoon salt
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1/2 teaspoon cumin
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1 teaspoon minced garlic
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3 Tablespoons freshly chopped cilantro
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1 cup long grain white rice
Combine the chicken broth and tomato sauce in a saucepan. Add in the salt, cumin, minced garlic, and chopped cilantro.
Heat on stovetop until the mixture comes to a boil.
Add the rice, cover the saucepan, and lower the heat to the lowest setting.
Let the mixture set like this on low heat for 20 to 25 minutes, until the rice has absorbed the liquid.
Remove from the heat and fluff it up a bit with a fork. Serve and enjoy.
