by Amy L. Hatch
If you’re anything like me, you find yourself standing in front of your pantry at dinnertime, frantically looking for a side dish that calls for ingredients you have on-hand and doesn’t require a lot of fuss to prepare.
What’s that? You say you plan your weekday meals in advance, and then plan your shopping list around that menu?
Oh, yeah, I do that, too.
IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE.
For those of you who are like me, I’d like to offer up a home-cooked standard that my mom taught me how to make. With school starting soon, I know I’ll be reaching for this recipe often, with soccer practice and busy fall days ahead. It calls for ingredients most home cooks will have on the shelf and it makes a great pairing for any kind of meat.
Start with your ingredients:
White rice, chicken stock or broth, an onion and butter.
Dice the onion — I used about a half a large sweet onion, but you could use more or less, depending on what appeals to you. Then, melt some butter (use between 1/4 and 1/2 a cup) and add the onion:
Mmmm, smells good!
Let the onions get a little bit brown. I also sprinkle them with some sea salt. Next, add 1 cup of white rice:
Pour it right in.
Stir the rice into the onions and cook them together, stirring, for about a minute.
Stir it up.
Then, add 2 cups of broth or stock, and bring the whole thing to a boil. Pour into a covered, oven-safe casserole dish and bake at 350-degrees for no less than 30 minutes.
You can’t even tell there are onions in the dish once it bakes, so picky eaters won’t reject it. Now you tell us, what’s your go-to weeknight side dish?
Roasted veggies.
Steamed veggies! Usually some combination of zucchini, squash, carrots & red potatoes. We use the Ziploc steamer bags. Just chop up the veggies, throw them in the steamer bag with a little evoo & seasoning salt & microwave as instructed on the bag. Super easy & it only takes 5-10 minutes (prep time included).
Can you use brown rice?
I make this ALL the time, except I don’t bake it. I just add a bunch of veggies [seasonal combos change all the time--broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, peas, carrots--whatever you've got], pour in the broth and a splash of white wine, cover the saute pan and cook for 20 minutes. If I use brown rice, I double the time and add the veggies after the first 20 minutes. I learned how to make it when I worked summers as a mother’s helper in Hampton Bays, NY. They called it “Rice Milanese”. The parents of this family were excellent cooks! Their recipe for seafood Paella was HUGELY delicious.