Tasty Tuesday’s: My Family’s “Green Rice”

Our family loves rice. I did not always love rice, but I married a man who is half-Vietnamese. Being that his mother  is Vietnamese, rice was a staple in his house. I always thought rice was, well, rice. But I know now there is a difference! We eat Jasmine rice–and love it. I always wondered why my 2 year old loved Ba-noi’s (my husband’s mom) rice, and not mine. But when I switched to jasmine rice, that problem was resolved. One of my children’s favorite rice meals can not really be considered Asian, unless you decide that including rice and soy sauce on the side makes it Asian (just about any rice dish in our house has soy sauce as a condiment.)

This dish is great, because you can make it as big or small as you want; you can put many different ingredients in it, and it includes spinach! And the kids love it! (If they like rice.)  So this is how I make it. We call it “green rice” as the spinach makes it look green. I know, we’re not very original or creative after all!

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“Green Rice”

Ingredients

• rice
• spinach
• 3-4 green onions
• 4 eggs
• meat
• shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions

Preparatory Work

1. Make about 5 cups of rice. (About 2 1/2 dry rice).
2. While that is cooking, cook the spinach. Use fresh spinach and steam it or cook up frozen chopped spinach. There is no set amount to use, but if you use frozen spinach, prepare one package which is 10 ounces. When that is cooked, drain it and squeeze the water out of it. Then, puree it in a food chopper. This step is not necessary if you love spinach. But my kids don't, so I find that if I make it so they don't see big chunks, they are fine with it!
3. Chops 3-4 green onions.
4. Beat 4 eggs.
5. Have meat that you want to put in the dish. (I almost always use about 2 c. diced ham that I have previously frozen from a ham that I cooked. Shrimp, sausage, or chicken would also be good.)
6. Prepare some shredded cheddar cheese (if desired).

Directions:

1. In a big skillet (11"-12"), sauté some chopped green onion, and 1-2 cloves minced garlic in 1-2 tablespoons sesame oil. You can use olive or vegetable oil as well if you don't have sesame oil.
2. Add eggs and scramble them. (When I beat the eggs, I add one tablespoon of milk for each egg. I know that many just scramble the eggs with water or with nothing. So you can prepare the eggs as you normally would to scramble them.)
3. Add spinach.
   
4. Add meat and cheese.
   
5. Add rice.
   
6. When it is all mixed together, I sprinkle some cheese on top, mix it in, and let it melt some. This step is not necessary if you don't want cheese, but we like cheese!
   
7. It's all done! We do have soy sauce on the table and put some on our rice; but for those who don't like soy sauce, this dish would be fine without it! (This is what our pan looks like after dinner is done!)