Spanish Rice

Our Thursday night 42 games have changed over the past year. Used to be our hostess would prepare the full meal, but that was when we had four players and a visitor. The evening has since grown into three tables, meaning twelve sitting down to dinner weekly, so we’ve moved to each of the wives bringing a dish.

Last night’s menu started with variations of King’s Ranch Chicken, black beans, tortilla salad and Spanish rice. I made the Spanish rice. It is a new recipe for me, so simple, but it turned out just perfect, so I thought I’d share.

The recipe I started with came from AllRecipes.com, but (of course) I had to adjust for the number of people (theirs served 5, we had 12) and a bit for our taste. Again, this recipe fits one of my criteria – it’s flexible!

Ingredients

3 tablespoons oil – olive oil would be my choice
3 tablespoons chopped onion – I used some new onions out of our garden
2 ¼ cups uncooked white rice
3 cups chicken broth – Swanson’s is so easy to keep on hand
1 ½ cup Pace picante sauce – for our guests, mild was preferred but it can be spiced up

That’s all of the ingredients, and the preparation is just about as simple.

I used our largest skillet (I have a Circulon – adored for its clean up!) to heat the oil over a medium burner, then added the onions and cooked them until they were tender – almost translucent.

Then I added the rice, mixing and stirring until all grains were coated and the onion well mixed in. Continue stirring until the rice begins to brown, then add the chicken broth and salsa, stirring until the salsa is evenly mixed in.

Cover and allow to simmer for 20 minutes, when all the liquid is absorbed.

The oil could be vegetable, the onion selected would impact the flavor, a change in the type of rice could, too. I recommend chicken broth, but it could be made with water or vegetable broth instead (especially if there’s a vegetarian at your table), and the picante sauce could be changed to taco sauce (hot or mild) for a change of Pace (pun intended.)