Brief background – I live alone, but enjoy cooking. Am lazy in many ways: to accompany various savoury things cooked, I often use labour-saving “boil-in-the-bag” rice. This stuff comes in bigger quantities than one person can eat at one sitting; so I have in my freezer, a daunting amount of frozen, pre-boiled rice, awaiting “recycling”. I have a couple of recipes for dishes which start off requiring cold boiled rice; but am not aware of many of such.
Would be very grateful for any recipes for (savoury) dishes requiring in their making, a significant quantity of cold boiled (white) rice. I’m an omnivore, happy with the occasional vegetarian meal. Any recipe-type suggestions, much appreciated.
You can heat up cold rice and use it anywhere you’d use freshly-made rice; it freezes well. So really, any recipe that calls for rice can be made using the frozen stuff. Just throw it in the microwave first and skip the step in the recipe that calls for cooking the rice.
Or do any of the following:
throw it in soup instead of noodles/potatoes/whatever starch it calls for
heat up a can of beans and use it to make rice & beans
make your favorite stir-fry, use frozen rice instead of fresh
add a handful of reheated rice to scrambled eggs along with some salsa for vaguely Mexican eggs.
use it along with whatever you like to stuff burritos with (meat/beans/sausage/cheese/salsa) and make burritos
Athena pretty much stole my post. Use it anywhere you would use stuff “fresh” from the bag. My favorite use is “stir-fried” with whatever leftovers are in the fridge.
I have a cookbook from the early '70s by Chinese chef Jim Lee. I love this book mainly for Lee’s anecdotes about China. He said that back in his boyhood, his favorite afterschool snack was a bowl of cold leftover boiled rice sprinkled liberally with soy sauce and chopped green onions. He called it the Chinese equivalent of the American peanut butter sandwich.
I grew up in a Vietnamese household. We would intentionally make too much rice, so that we could make fried rice in the morning for breakfast. Sample recipe (so loose as to barely qualify):
some rice
a little oil
whatever leftover veggies or meat you’ve got in the fridge: chopped white onion, chopped green onion, diced ham or chicken, green peas, etc etc.
about one whole egg per two cups of rice
soy sauce, or if you’re adventurous, fish sauce
Toss the rice and goodies in heated oil until hot. Crack in the eggs and scramble them into the rice. Salt to taste using your soy sauce or fish sauce rather than granulated salt. Seriously: easy, fast, delicious - and cheap, since it’s basically refrigerator velcro.
I’m addicted to plain ol’ chicken and rice. I usually roast a package of chicken thighs and keep them in the freezer along with the left-over rice. Defrost, cut up the chicken, sprinkle the rice with a little water, cover in foil and heat in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.
I use a toaster oven and it only takes about 11 minutes. Sometimes I add left-over broccoli, mushrooms, onions or all three…and/or top with Parmesan cheese. But just the chicken and rice are delicious, too.
Because day old rice makes the best fried rice, I am also one who routinely makes too much rice, on purpose! We have fried rice, for dinner, at least once a week. Using whatever tiny bit of left over meat there might be, plus veggies of any stripe. It’s best when I remember to get fresh bean sprouts, I think! It always includes cucumber, celery, green onions, frozen peas, an egg and some fresh cilantro for garnish.
It did take me a second to parse that, especially since I think of it as “steamed rice” (even though it’s probably more boiled than steamed, now that I think of it).
Mmmm - good Southern dish! My grandma used to make this for me.
My mother grew up in Seattle, and had never had rice as a dish on its own until my dad brought her back to Texas. She’d only had it in goulash and casseroles.
Make my lemon rice. It goes especially good with barbecue or teriyaki and is a refreshing summer dish.
Slice some scallions along with the green ends or use chives. Put them in a frying pan with a little butter/a little oil. Add some frozen or fresh peas and chopped parsley. Dash in some tabasco sauce and soy sauce.
Heat and toss rice in pan. Stir in some fresh lemon zest and serve.
Or make a cold rice salad with chicken, ham or seafood.
For the cook willing to do a little more work, this is one of the best uses for leftover rice I’ve ever made. Hmmm… now that I think about it, I think I have everything to make this. Breakfast tomorrow!
Freezing rice does work very well - the only drawback to using it in my experience is that it dries out, so whatever you use it for needs to be a use where you’ll be adding a little moisture back in - casseroles, stir fry, soup, etc. A plain white rice side wouldn’t be as good a freshly made but almost any other use will be fine.
