Cooking with Rice
Rice is a filling ingredient for any recipe. Yet, with a small pad of butter, and a bit of salt and pepper it stands out on its own as a mouth-watering dish. Rice is an appealing ingredient because it is versatile. So much so that it can be used in both savory and sweet recipes (rice pudding).
Some recipes (such as pig-in-the-blanket or stuffed peppers) call for the rice to be cooked first. In others (Spanish rice), the ingredients are all cooked together. There are many brands of prepared rice, from Uncle Bens, to Rice-a-Roni, to Zatarain's. All of which provide delicious, easy-to-make dishes out of a box.
Nevertheless, people get excited about recipes made from scratch for a very good reason. Scratch recipes provide original flavors and give the cook a degree of flexibility in spice selection impossible from a packet of prepared spices. Our editors have put together a few recipes to demonstrate the versatility and appeal of rice.
