What to do with cooked rice (casserole w/o cream-of-mushroom?)

Cafe Society
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I cooked way too much rice last night. So now we have a bunch of cooked rice. I’m thinking I’d like to use it for a dinner dish sometime soon. I’m not a huge fan of fried rice and though we have it sometimes, I’m not really interested in that for this week.

I was thinking of a rice casserole, but all the ones I’ve been looking at recipes for involve cream of mushroom soup or lipton onion mix, and I just don’t feel like doing the processed food thing right now either. Are there any good rice casserole recipes that use some other thickener/flavor-booster besides cream-of-mushroom or onion soup mix?

Or anything else? What do you do with a bunch of plain cooked rice? It’s got to involve meat (if I can use the leftover cooked beef and/or chicken in the fridge, a plus), otherwise mr. hunter won’t eat it, and I would prefer some sort of vegetable content so I don’t have to make a separate veggie dish, but that’s not mandatory.

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You can make a jambalaya of sorts - sautee some onions/peppers/celery add some some stock and your leftover meat and the rice, then bitchslap it w/ seasonings.

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This will work for pretty much any rice dish you can think of too, like fried rice. Just vary the other ingredients. You don’t even have to follow a recipe, just throw in what you’d like. As long as the meat you use is thoroughly cooked, it’s hard to screw up. In the case of precooked meat, you’d mostly be cooking whatever veggies you want to use and then put the rice and meat in the pan for only as long as it takes to warm them up and mix them with the veggies and seasonings.

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Some sort of Chinese/SE-Asian fried rice perhaps? - chinesefood.about.com has loads of recipes.

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Stuffed peppers! Chop your beef fine and add some sauteed chopped onions, add to rice, stuff bell peppers, put in casserole and cover with tomato sauce. Bake at low temperature until peppers are done.

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I’d add it to a vat of soup, or serve chili over it.

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Caramelized onion, egg, bacon, steamed in chicken or beef broth.

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In a similar vein, I’ve often made a modified Swiss steak with chili spices and served it over rice. Very tasty!

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I like to heat up a couple of scoops, add a pat of butter, and top with a couple of fried eggs.

Breakfast is served!

Also, heat it in a saucepan with a little milk, sugar, cinnamon and raisins. Get it to a consistency you like, and call it rice pudding.

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You can freeze cooked rice, you know.

As kaylasdad99 mentions, there’s always rice pudding. If your rice is unseasoned, this might be your best bet. I skip the raisins, but I usually don’t care for raisins in anything.

I usually put some rice in my soups and stews. Make beef or chicken soup with onions, carrots, and celery, and don’t put in potatoes. Instead, add some of the cooked rice just before serving, and let it heat in the broth.

Hopping John requires rice, but it also requires either some ham or bacon or smoked ham hocks as well as the rice and black eye peas.

You can chop up some of the beef, open, drain, and rinse a can of red beans, and heat the beans and beef in some broth, and add the rice at the end. I have never tried this with chicken, and again, it works better with pork (particularly sausage), but I’ve done it with beef, too, and it’s pretty good.

Or get a jar of salsa, or make your own. Heat up some chopped chicken or beef in the salsa, panfry some diced onion and bell pepper in a very little olive oil, add some salsa to the mix, then add some rice. Call it Mexican night at home.

It’s perfectly possible to make your own cream sauce at home, you know. Cream of mushroom soup is usually just a quick’n’dirty substitute for cream sauce. So if you see a casserole recipe that you like, but it calls for cream of mushroom soup, just panfry some mushrooms and/or onions, and make some cream sauce with the mushrooms/onions.

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Make a white sauce and melt a good melting sharp cheese in it. Stir in your rice, chicken and some brocolli.

Or make a hot chicken, rice salad. Mix with onions, celery, chicken, slivered almonds, salt and pepper and mayonnaise.

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Beef Burgundy over rice was always one of my favorites growing up. Beefy, winey, gravy goodness over white rice. Nom, nom, nom.

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This is what I do with leftover rice. It’s amazing. So much so that I often cook extra rice because it’s just that good.

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How could I forget Beef Stroganoff over rice? :smack: AND it will use up some of the leftover beef, too.

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take cooked rice, add flour, egg and enough milk to let you mold it into cakes. I use some sugar and cinnamon to make it sweet - form into little cakes and fry up in butter. My mom made these for us when I was growing up.

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I always make more rice than I need on purpose and freeze it. It’s so much easier to pop some rice in the microwave than to cook up some more. I can’t tell the difference in taste, since I don’t eat the rice by itself, Japanese style.

One other unusual thing I do with rice is put it into a scramble. Gives it a little more heft, especially if you’re doing it for dinner. Eggs, chopped up veggies, ham, and rice. Saute the veggies, ham and rice, add eggs, cook. Yum!

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Take the rice and put it in a blender. You want it smooth but not watery. Then you can take the rice and mix it with fruit or even chocolate and have it for breakfast. Basically it’s like your home version of “cream of rice”

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No cream of mushroom soup?

OP reported to the Minnesota Casserole Commission.

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Throw it at a wedding, preferably of a couple you don’t know

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As a variation, mix with beaten egg, bread crumbs, salt and Parmesan cheese. Fry in said butter until golden. This works especially well with leftover risotto.

I like sausage or hamburger gravy on my rice, also.