You are probably familiar with various Mexican dishes, such as tacos, enchiladas or totopos with salsa, and you probably have a favourite among them. However, you may not know another very typical Mexican dish—red rice, tomato rice or Mexican rice. If you have not tried it yet, you are missing out on what could be your new favourite.
A versatile dish
There indeed exists naturally red rice, whose grains have a reddish colour and are grown mainly in Asia. However, here we are talking about another red rice, known internationally as Mexican rice. It is prepared with tomato juice or tomato pulp, which gives this rice a characteristic reddish colour.
Mexican rice can be eaten as an entrée, side dish or main course. However, it is usually accompanied by other ingredients, such as chunks of meat, chopped vegetables, and others, as you can read in this delicious recipe for cheesy Mexican rice. In addition to tomato, the other characteristic ingredient of Mexican rice is chicken or beef broth, which contributes to its tasty flavour. In fact, both tomato juice and broth replace the plain water normally used to prepare plain white rice.
Cook your own Mexican rice
If you know how to cook white rice, you will be able to cook Mexican rice without any difficulty. Here are the ingredients you need:
- One cup of rice.
- One cup of tomato juice or pulp.
- One cup of chicken or beef broth.
- One tablespoon of chopped onion.
- One tablespoon of chopped pepper.
- One can of mixed vegetables.
- Two tablespoons of vegetable oil.
- A pinch of salt.
- A pinch of cumin.
Now follow these steps:
- Wash the rice to remove excess starch, which will prevent lumps—unless, of course, you like lumpy rice (no kidding: some people find lumpy rice better; this is the most appropriate rice to eat with chopsticks).
- Put a saucepan on the stove and sauté the chopped onion and pepper with the oil.
- Once these are sautéed, add the cup of rice, the cup of tomato juice and the cup of broth. Stir a little to mix everything together.
- Add the salt and cumin. Stir again.
- Bring the mixture to a boil. When it starts to boil, cover the saucepan and let it simmer for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, check the rice. If not all the liquid has evaporated, or if the grains are not soft enough, leave the saucepan on the heat for a few more minutes.
- If the rice is already cooked, turn off the heat and pass over a long-tine fork several times to loosen the grains.
- Add the mixed vegetables that were canned, and stir the mixture carefully.
Listo! Now you have your Mexican rice ready to eat.
Level it up
Prepared alone or with vegetables, Mexican rice serves either as an entrée or as a side dish to a more elaborate course. However, with the addition of more ingredients, the companion can easily become the star of the meal. In order to do this, you can enrich Mexican rice with pieces of beef, pork or chicken, or—if you are not a meat lover—with more varied and abundant vegetables: corn, carrots, peas, beans, mushrooms… You can also try grated cheese or sliced hard-boiled eggs. If you are a little daring, you might even want to add a splash of ketchup, so that your Mexican rice will have twice as much tomato in it. In this way, it will become literally red rice.
Cultural fusion
Mexican rice is a great culinary example of cultural fusion.
Tomatoes are native to Mexico, where they had been cultivated as a foodstuff by indigenous people for centuries when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the New World.
Rice came to colonial Mexico from Asia, thanks to the famous Spanish galeón de Manila, that travelled annually between Acapulco and the Philippines. However, rice cultivation did not become popular until the 19th century, when the country had already declared its independence from the Spanish metropolis.
Then, it was only a matter of time before some creative cook came up with the brilliant idea of mixing tomato and rice, and created this delicious combination for Mexico and the world.
