hello this is chef john from food wishes comm with the best baked rice and beans
that's where i do to certain recent worldwide events i begin a lot of
requests for easy hearty recipes that could be made using basic drying canned
ingredients and this incredibly delicious spanish-style baked rice and
beans is all that and more way more you're also gonna see a fantastic and
foolproof technique for making perfect rice every time which is important for
more than culinary reasons alright there are just so many things we can't control
right now it feels good to work with something we can so with that let's go
ahead get started by dumping some white rice into a casserole dish and while
this recipe is designed for pretty much any long grain white rice I'm actually
using a variety called basmati which if you can find works especially well with
this and then as far as seasonings go we will add some salt as well as some
freshly ground black pepper some ground cumin some chili powder or if you want
just some paprika will definitely also want a little bit of cayenne or in my
case a lot of cayenne and then last but not least some dry oregano and then once
all that's in there we will pour in the key to this whole operation about a
quarter cup of olive oil and we'll go ahead and take a freakishly small wooden
spoon and stir all that together and by the way if you wanted you could also use
melted butter here as it will have the same effect or any liquefied fat for
that matter okay so that's up to you I mean you are for all the princess grace
of cooking while sheltering in place but no matter what you use here the key is
to keep stirring and mixing until every single grain of rice is coated and as
you'll see later that's what's gonna help us achieve such a beautiful texture
so like I said we'll go ahead and stir that until those grains are thoroughly
coated at which point we'll move on to the wet ingredients including a 16-ounce
jar of your favorite tomato salsa and we don't need any fancy expensive brands
here okay pretty much anything will work and I think the one I used included some
roasted green chilies although I'm not really sure since I was kind of scared
to look at the ingredients and then to that we will add a couple cups of
chicken broth which of course we will use to rinse out whatever we transfer to
our salsa in with so as not to waste we will finish up with a couple cans of
drained red kidney beans or of course the canned beans of your choice
all right pinto beans would be great as would black beans and then what we'll do
once we have all that stirred together and is equally distributed as possible
let's go ahead and cover this very very very tightly with some heavy duty foil
and if you're gonna use the cheaper non heavy duty foil make sure you use a few
pieces and I know what some of you are thinking in times like these shouldn't
we save that foil in case we have to make hats no trust me those don't work
and one of the huge keys of this recipes getting this covered nice and tightly
otherwise too much of our liquid could evaporate in the oven which by the way
is our next stop so once that's wrap we'll go ahead and transfer this into
the center of a 350 degree oven for about an hour and 10 minutes or until it
looks like this actually hold on while I unwrap this or until it looks like this
and then what we'll do once this is unwrapped is perform the old fork and
fluff where we take a fork and break all this up by sort of going underneath and
turning the rice over the top and then breaking up the clumps and this maneuver
is doing two very important things okay it's releasing a tremendous amount of
heat so that our rice stops cooking but it's also breaking up large clumps of
rice and to perfectly separated individual grains and once that was done
I went ahead and gave it a taste to see how I did which reminds me of a tip once
you unwrap this taste a little bit to make sure the rice is cooked before you
give the old old fork and fluff because if it's not you can always rewrap it and
pop it back in the oven but I could tell through experiences I was stirring mine
it was fine so the texture was spot-on and it was also perfectly seasoned and
incredibly delicious so I move down to final service and garnish with a little
bit of chopped cilantro right just because you're in the middle of a
pandemic does not mean you can forget about presentation and by the way once
all the parsley and rest of the herbs are gone at the store there will always
be a few bunches of cilantro left and then once herbs I went in for another
taste mostly so I could show off the magic of coating that rice with the oil
before we bake it okay because while these grains where I still have a little
bit of starchiness on the surface by coating them in that fat
rice is way less likely to stick together and get all clumpy so I've
always considered this one of the easiest and most foolproof methods for
making rice but anyway after eating out of the dish for a little bit I decided
to serve some up in a bowl and I went ahead and garnish with some Monterey
Jack cheese and a little dollop of sour cream and a little more chopped cilantro
and while this would obviously make an incredible side dish serve like this it
really does eat like a meal and one really interesting thing about this
recipe because we used a relatively small amount of liquid for the amount of
rice I think a little bit of moisture has been pulled out of the bean and they
seemed to take on a meteor taste and texture and when I say meteor I'm
referring to taste like meat and not like one of those big rocks that hits
the earth causing the next worldwide situation but anyway that's it what I'm
calling and think is the best baked rice and beans
so simple so easy so delicious and the kind of food that makes everything seem
a little less scary so for all those reasons and more I really do hope you
give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the ingredient
amounts a principle written recipe and much more info as usual and as always
enjoy
you