Rice Ideas Needed Please!

[Lesley Jay]

I will have to serve rice with the Christmas dinner and I need some suggestions please. I'm making a traditional roast dinner but the person having rice will only have meat and vegetables. Plain boiled rice is a bit boring so any suggestions on how I could make it more interesting please?

[runnerbean]

LJ you could stir fry onions, mushroom,s red and green peppers and when all is cooked stir in cooked rice with a splash of soya sauce, you could add red and green colour to cooked rice with a cocktail stick dipped in the colour and sprinkled in white cooked rice, and stir with fork to make red, green and white Christmassy rice. Rice cooked in saffron gives a nice flavour and taste and colour. Red Carmague rice from most supermarkets, is a reddish rice with a nutty flavour, or plain and wild rice is pretty good too, let your imagination go wild, hope you find these suggestions helpful!

[Lesley Jay]

Thanks Runnerbean. The veggies would 'hold' in the oven for a bit (I hope!) so that I'm not doing everything at the last minute. I was worried that plain rice would be boring and also a bit dry. There is no way that I will have the time to colour rice with cocktail sticks! The kitchen is like a mad house on Christmas day!

[runnerbean]

LJ Its so quick you just dip the cocktail stick into the individual bottles, and drip around the rice, its colours some of the rice and not all of it, it saves pouring the liquid in as you can pour too much in, and everything is just one BIG blob of colour, cook and freeze ahead and just reheat on Christmas Day. Simple!

[Lesley Jay]

Freeze and reheat rice? I didn't know you could. How do you reheat it Runnerbean?

[kirsty b]

Baked rice is nice and you can put it in the oven and forget about it till its ready.
Fry off some choppped onions and any other veggies you fancy in it for colour. Add mixed herbs. Use 2parts stock/water to one part rice and stick it in a lightly greased oven dish (with lid) for about half an hour. Last time i did it I put it on Gas 5/6 and it came out ok.

[runnerbean]

LJ Take out of freezer the night before into your fridge, next day sprinkle with water, re-heat in microwave, stirring half way through, until piping hot or cover in foil pop into oven stirring halfway through, make sure heated throughly, say about 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour.