Red Rice
Merely calling this dish red rice doesn’t do it justice as far as all the flavor it possesses. With a combination of fresh vegetables cooked down into white rice, it’s easy to create a tomato-y, delicious side dish for your next Mexican food entree.

Sometimes, in reflecting on my childhood, I realize just what a weird kid I was.

I’ll forever be thankful that I had supportive parents who had a “go with the flow” attitude about my idiosyncracies.

One of those strange traits flashed in my mind recently, when I decided I wanted to make a Mexican-style rice as a side for dinner. I suddenly remembered back to eating Mexican food with my family at a locally owned kiosk at the mall. We would go every so often, and the food was great—especially the Mexican rice.

I got to a point where I stopped ordering an entree. I would just get a double side order of rice, and that would be my meal. I loved it. I’m sure my parents were wondering if I was switched at birth.

Weird or not, though, I still love rice, and especially the kinds you get a Mexican restaurant, so when I tried out the recipe I shared with you last week from TV chef Pati Jinich, I had to try one of her rice recipes, as well, to go with it.

You can find the original recipe on her website at https://patijinich.com/red-rice/. I added extra garlic in my version.

Red Rice
Print Recipe

Red Rice

Merely calling this dish red rice doesn’t do it justice as far as all the flavor it possesses. With a combination of fresh vegetables cooked down into white rice, it’s easy to create a tomato-y, delicious side dish for your next Mexican food entree.
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: Mexican
Keyword: carrots, chicken broth, corn, fresh tomatoes, frozen carrots, frozen corn, frozen peas, garlic, Italian parsley, peas, pickled jalapenos, rice, vegetable broth, white rice

Ingredients

  • 1 pound ripe tomatoes quartered
  • 1 small white onion chopped
  • 6 cloves garlic
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • 3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil
  • 2 cups white rice
  • 4 sprigs fresh Italian parsley chopped
  • 2-3 tablespoons pickled jalapeno slices
  • 3/4 cup carrots diced (fresh or frozen)
  • 1/2 cup peas fresh or frozen
  • 1/2 cup corn fresh or frozen

Instructions

  • Add the tomatoes, onion, garlic and salt to a food processor or blender, and blend it until the mixture is smooth.
  • Pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer into a large liquid measuring cup.
  • Look at how much liquid is in the cup, and then measure out enough chicken broth in a separate measuring cup so that you’ll have four cups of total liquid. (Don’t mix them together yet.)
  • Heat the oil in a medium-sized pot over medium-high heat. Add the rice, and stir regularly, cooking for three or four minutes until the rice is a milky color. Pour in the reserved tomato mixture, and continue to stirring regularly, letting the rice absorb most of the liquid. This will take another three or four minutes.
  • Stir in the chicken broth, parsley, jalapenos, carrots, peas and corn, and stir to combine.
  • Cover the pot and cook for 15 minutes or until the rice is cooked through. (If it isn’t cooked through and there is no more liquid in the pot, add a few tablespoons of water, cover and let it cook for another three minutes or so.) Fluff with a fork, and serve.

This was the perfect side dish, and I loved the added veggies in this rice, too. It was a nice change of pace from the more standard types of Mexican rice. If you like more spice to your food, you could add even more jalapenos. This didn’t have much of a kick to it, but letting the sauce cook a bit with the rice really made the tomato flavors pop, which I really liked.

And my parents would have been proud to see me eating rice as a side dish instead of just an entree. Let’s just not talk about how I consumed the leftovers, OK?

This piece first appeared in print April 17, 2025.

Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.