- There's only one other thing
that'll take a charro bean recipe to another level
once you get it into the bowl,
and that's a big old scoop of Spanish rice.
Now, is it Spanish rice?
Is it Mexican rice?
You can call it whatever you want,
but this is the rice that my mama makes at home.
Every time we make rice,
it's the same one we use in catering.
Everybody always loves my mother's rice.
Whoohoo!
This is good.
Here you go, mom.
Oh, yeah.
- Let's go finish this first.
- Cheers.
(both laugh)
- All right, mom, let's make some rice.
- Let's start it.
- So we're gonna be cooking the rice
on one of my mom's very old Dutch ovens.
It's her favorite thing to make rice on-
- It was my mom's.
- and a few other greens.
- So it was grandma's?
- Yes, it was my mom's.
- The Dutch oven, I didn't remember that,
but that was my grandma's Dutch oven,
so it's been in the family a very long time.
- I start with a tablespoon of oil,
and three quarter cups of rice.
One teaspoon of garlic powder,
one teaspoon of onion powder, and a pinch of oregano.
Not everybody uses oregano, but I like the way that tastes.
And I use half a teaspoon of Cominos.
Also, I use one tablespoon of chicken bouillon.
It's a chicken bouillon.
- This brand is the Maggie brand.
- I also use a teaspoon of salt.
You might add some more according to your taste.
You may need some more layers, but that's what I use.
And before I put all the spices in there,
I usually like to put the tomato sauce in there,
a third of a cup.
And I'll put that in, give it a little stir,
so you can saute a little bit,
and to me, that gives it a good flavor also.
After we do all that,
I pour in two cups of chicken broth.
Also,
the broth is made out of chicken bones
of all the chickens the nanny buys all the time.
I like to keep them at the next,
and then I boil them and save the broth
for cooking pasta or anything,
the rice, anything that we can put it in.
You can put water, but you're supposed to warm it up first
before you put it in the rice.
You don't wanna put the water cold in there,
because that makes the rice a little bit mushy.
But the first thing that I need to do
before we put all of this in there, is brown the rice.
- All right.
So, first, we're gonna add that tablespoon of oil,
Spread it around,
and mom already has the pan a little bit warmed up.
We're gonna dump the rice in there,
start spreading it around.
- Also, once you get everything in there,
your water, which will be the last thing,
once it starts boiling, you cover it up,
and do not open it for at least 10 minutes.
And you don't stir it at all, so it won't come out mushy.
Just try it and see if it's cooked or not.
And if you need to cook it some more, cover it back again.
Don't stir it.
- So the trick to nice fluffy rice is to put the lid on it,
and leave it on at least 10 minutes.
- Yeah, about at least 10 minutes.
Because you gotta check and see
if the water evaporated too quick, or what?
This is like, you have to check, but don't stir.
You can see where the oil is starting to come to the rice,
and it's starting to get little bit brown,
so we continue stirring it so we can brown evenly
so that you can see what it takes to get it like that,
to get it into that nice, beautiful, golden color.
- Starting to look really pretty,
and then I can smell- - It smells very good.
the toasty rice, it smells really good, it smells great.
- You can smell it all the way outside.
(both laugh)
- Now, this is a big, heavy cast iron pan,
it tends to cook the rice a little bit quicker.
When cast iron gets hot, it gets hot,
and stays hot a long time.
So you can cook with a little bit less heat.
- You see how beautiful it looks?
- Yeah, it looks really nice, mama.
All right.
So here comes the tomato sauce.
- Yeah, here comes the tomato sauce, watch the steam.
(tomato sauce frying)
- (whistles) Look at it go.
Now we got some steam going on there.
- I had already put all the spices together
so I could just put everything at the same time.
- Okay.
So we got all our spices, and the Maggi comes in there
together at the same time.
She's gonna let those toast a little bit with the heat
before adding the chicken broth.
- Yes.
Here we go.
Not too much though.
- It sure looks nice.
That's a pretty color on the broth already.
- I'm gonna put a little bit more water in there
because I think that two cup was not enough.
So I put in like maybe half a cup,
I'm not gonna do a whole cup.
- So all cooking, it's a learned experience.
You have to watch what you're doing, eyeball it,
and pay attention, of course.
Do whatever you need to do,
if it needs more water, you add more water,
and that's what we just did.
- It's all the stirring I'm gonna do for now.
I'm gonna put the lid on, cover it,
and let it cook for a few minutes.
I'm gonna get the heat lower
because we don't want it to start over boiling to simmering.
There we go.
- What are we doing next, mom?
- Wait for it to cook, and we can eat.
To me,
sometimes it takes longer to brown the rice than to cook it.
And you need to be very careful not to burn it,
but at the same time,
you want it with a nice color brown.
Watch out that it doesn't dry up,
and don't cook it too long.
You're supposed to cook it like 15 minutes
depending also on the pan,
because if it's a thick heavy pan
like the one I'm gonna use, which is cast iron,
it can cook quick.
If you use a thin pan,
it might take a little longer
because the water will dry up faster.
- Grandma's rice is cooking.
She's gonna check it, it's been right at about 10 minutes.
Woohoo, man!
Guys and girls, if you could smell this.
Whoo!
Look at that rice.
- I'm gonna turn it off already because I think it's cooked.
- Okay, it's cooked.
So mom says she's gonna turn it off already,
and that extra carryover heat from the pan's
gonna finish cooking the rice.
- Okay, I'm gonna take the lid off.
I wanna check on this rice and make sure that it's okay.
Look at that.
It's all pretty.
- Beautiful rice.
- And see how fluffy it is.
- Not sticky.
- Not sticky at all.
- That's the way you want your rice.
- Uh-huh.
- Not sticky, but nice and fluffy.
- Now you can stir it (laughs).
- All right.
Okay, cool.
- Okay.
- Look how pretty that looks.
- Perfect.
- It's really nice-looking rice.
- Tastes good.
- All right.
Now this rice really only took about 15 minutes total
to cook normally.
Today was a little bit less
cuz we used this heavy Dutch oven,
and once it got hot, we even turned it off,
and let it finish cooking with just the carryover heat.
If you use a lighter pan, you can use that too.
Just gonna take another two or three,
maybe four minutes longer to cook.
But it's so easy to make,
and it doesn't take any time at all.
Total cooking time from start to finish,
total time to make rice like this between start and finish
is maybe 25 or 30 minutes tops.
So guys, if you like the rice,
go ahead and hit the like button,
remember to ring the bell too
so you don't miss any notifications.
And if you want to up your barbecue game,
go to pitmasterclass.us.
If you wanna buy my two rubs, go to pitmaster.us.
Guys, thanks for watching.
Remember to keep the smoke light,
and wow!
Many years ago, we used to cater a lot,
and so mom would always make the rice for us.
One of the things about using powders
is that it's a lot easier to be consistent with your recipe
on a week to week basis or each time you make it basis,
because it's an actual measurement,
whereas sometimes this onion, that onion, the other onion,
unless you're pressing it down and measuring it,
it's gonna be a little bit harder
to be exactly consistent every single time.
But when you use powders and stuff like this,
it's very easy to be consistent on your recipe
time after time after time again.
So that's the other reason
we started using powders years ago,
and it's always been fantastic.