Carrot Ginger Rice

Last night for dinner, I wanted to make some things we've never had before.  I stumbled across a really good cooking site called For the Love of Cooking and found this recipe.  This was definitely something we had never had before, so I tried it.

Here's what you'll need:

Ingredients:

1C Basmati Rice (I only had medium grain)

2C Chicken Broth

1T Olive Oil

1/2 Sweet Onion (I used Vidalia)

2 Carrots, peeled and grated

1t Fresh Ginger, peeled and grated/minced

1 Clove Garlic, grated

Salt and Pepper to taste

Dash Cayenne Pepper (optional.  I omitted)

1/4C Fresh Cilantro (I didn't have any)

Pour your rice into a pot.

 

Add your chicken stock.  I used low-sodium because I was out of
homemade.  That would have made this even better!

Give it a stir, put the lid on and bring to a boil.  Then turn down 

to a simmer and cook for 20 minutes, lid on the whole time.

While that's cooking, pour a Tablespoon of olive oil into a frying pan.

The original recipe calls for 2t as shown below, but I ended up adding 1t more.

Dump in your diced onion and stir over medium heat.

While that's (lightly) browning, start on your grating.

I didn't have any whole carrots, so I used 10 baby carrots.  I also

used a fine grater, so my end product looks a lot different than the original..

Save the little nubbins you can't grate without taking off a finger
and put them in your stock bag in the freezer.

Grate your garlic.

And then your peeled ginger.

Not sure if you can see it in this pic, but my ginger had a blue-green

tinge to it.  This freaked me out until I read that it's actually a higher

quality, more desirable thing to have in ginger.  It's Hawaiian Blue Ginger.

Who knew?!  Not me!  I thought it was going bad or something!

When your onions are slightly brown, 

Plop in your other ingredients.

Give them a stir and cook for a couple of minutes
to take away the raw taste of the grated ingredients.

Add in your rice.

Give it a stir to combine.

Add in salt and pepper to taste.  If you are adding cilantro,

now would be the time to add it.

Serve!

Notes:

I wish I had cilantro because I love it!  But then the rest of my family wouldn't eat it  

I did feel like it needed some acid or something.  (Probably because there was no cilantro, darn it!)  I ended up squeezing the juice of an orange in this afterward.  That helped quite a bit.

This was a really unusual tasting dish that we loved.  I would definitely make this again.

I omitted the cayenne pepper because the garlic and ginger already gave it a mild heat.  I didn't want it to be too hot for my son.  Or my husband, who's a total weenie in the spice department.

This side dish came to $2.43 and made about 6 servings at 40 cents each.  The reason it's so high is because I used canned chicken stock.  Had I used my own (I was out), it would have only come to about 93 cents, or 15.5 cents a serving.  Big difference!   That's one good reason to go out and get a chicken!

I served this up with some Garlic Ginger Chicken  and some Lemon Garlic Broccoli.  All recipes courtesy of For the Love of Food with some minor changes.

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