rice – But What Can You Eat?

I think I’ve told you all before, but I don’t actually eat a lot of what we think of in the US as ‘breakfast food.’ Since I can’t have eggs or soy that generally rules out quiches, bagels, omelettes, casseroles…you get the idea. The USA loves its eggs and cheese (for which I cannot blame them!) but it does tend to rule me out.

In general, I eat leftovers from the day before with my morning coffee. I honestly can’t stand the texture of most porridge (oats make me itch!) and since I almost always have cooked rice in the fridge I either end up eating that with fake butter, or a smoothie. I don’t have as much of an appetite in the morning anyway, so a little something that wakes my stomach up works just fine for me.

That being said, one of the things I’ve discovered I can eat (with attendant changes for my allergies) is this Thai breakfast soup I’ve learned from Hot Thai Kitchen. It’s savory without being too rich, and fragrant without being overwhelming. Better still, the rice never becomes mushy or sticky, and it comes together very quickly.

In Pailin’s version, this is ‘Kao Tom Koong,’ made of rice, an onion/cilantro/garlic mash, broth, and shrimp. She also calls for soy sauce, which is not happening, but her version looks delicious and entirely worthwhile. Check out her channel for more recipes!

My version is made out of chicken (I don’t often have shrimp), and I like a lot of rice and slightly less broth. When I made it this time I decided to garnish it with some red pepper and green onion, which were wasting away in my fridge, but the sky’s the limit with regards to things to add. Ginger is delicious, and I think bits of crumbled bacon might be nice as well. It’s so good and so quick, and it uses a very few ingredients. I’m pretty sure I could eat three gallons of it, but I won’t! I will just eat it many times instead.

You’ll Need (Serves 1):

1/2 – 1 cup rice, already cooked and heated for 1 minute in the microwave

1/2 cup – 1 cup chicken broth

1 clove roasted garlic

1 tsp. cilantro

1/4 cup chopped onions

1/4 cup already cooked chicken, chopped (optional)

1 tsp. white pepper

1-2 tsps. fish sauce

Salt (to taste)

1 tsp. red pepper flakes

1 tsp olive oil

Heat a saucepan and cook the onions, garlic, and cilantro with the spices until the onions are translucent. Add in the broth and then the warm rice. If you’re using chicken or some other protein, add that in too, and then warm it all the way through. Pour into a bowl and then garnish with whatever you want!

In my family, the side dish you’re always going to see is rice. I can eat it, my mother can eat it, my little brother can eat more of it, but he is only smaller than me in years so that makes sense (seriously, it’s so difficult to be so much older and yet so much shorter!) Even when I could eat practically nothing without reacting to it, I could eat jasmine rice.

But on Thanksgiving—at least in my family—there was never a grain of rice to be seen. It just wasn’t a part of my grandmother’s traditional menu, and changing that line up required an Act of Congress and a two-thirds majority of Aunts. When I was younger, it wasn’t so much of a problem, but now that my food allergies outlaw so many commercial brands and ingredients, putting together a meal that both tastes good and reminds me of my childhood Thanksgivings takes a little bit more ingenuity. Enter Rice Stuffing!

I knew two things I wanted when I set about putting this recipe together: I wanted it to taste like regular stuffing and I wanted the whole dish not to take forever and a day to cook. I think I’ve succeeded on both fronts with this recipe, which creates mound after mound of flavorful rice stuffing dotted with vegetables and herbs. It’s easily adaptable to whatever stuffing recipe you hold dear to your heart as well, and it’s absolutely no muss, no fuss.

You’ll Need (makes 6 servings):

2 cups cooked white jasmine rice

2 carrots, diced small

2 celery stalks, diced small

1 medium-sized onion, diced small

2 – 3 Tbsps. Olive oil

2 cloves roasted garlic, either smushed or chopped

2 tsps. salt

2 tsps. black pepper

1 tsp. red pepper flakes

2 tsps. thyme

2 tsps. sage

1 tsp. rosemary

2 tsps. parsley

1/2 – 2/3 cup broth (use mushroom broth to make it vegan!)

Optional:

1 cup crumbled sausage meat for a heartier dish (cooked with the vegetables)

1 cup button mushrooms, chopped (cooked with the vegetables)

Make the rice ahead of time. When you put the rice into the mix, it should be room temperature, but not cold. You’re also going to need a metal spatula to scrape the bottom of your pan.

Put your oil into a deep frying pan and heat the pan to medium. Dice up your vegetables and add them to the pan, making sure to also add in all the herbs and spices, except for your garlic. Let that cook down, stirring occasionally, the vegetables soften and the onions become translucent. Add in your garlic and stir until you can smell it.

Push all your vegetables to the sides of the pan, and make a well. Add in your cooked rice, and break up any clumps with your spatula. You want the rice to warm through, so carefully stir it in with the vegetables. When the rice mixture begins to stick to the bottom of the frying pan, creating a sort of brown skin, slowly begin pouring in your broth. You want to add enough liquid that the rice plumps up a bit and comes away from the bottom of the pan, but not enough to drown the rice and make it a solid mushy mess. Keep turning the stuffing in the pan until every grain of rice shines with the ‘sauce’ you’ve created and the food has begun to stick again. Then, transfer to a serving dish, and it’s ready to go!

Tag: rice

Savory Breakfast Soup

Rice Stuffing For the Rest of Us: Gluten-free and Allergy-Friendly