By Early December. Two weeks to the courthouse date. The apartment has the small careful pre-wedding cleaning rhythm where every Sunday afternoon I have been doing the small chores that need to be done before family-comes-over — vacuuming the small living room rug, dusting the small bookshelf, organizing the small linen closet. The chores are not the work I would normally call cleaning; the chores are the small touches that mean Mama and Kathy and Aunt Linda walking through the apartment on December nineteenth will not have anything to comment on quietly to each other later.
Sunday I made Spanish rice dinner because the dish is the kind of one-pan workhorse Mama had taught me to make in the rental-house kitchen in 2017 and that I had not made since the move. Ground beef, peppers, onions, garlic, tomato sauce, spices, rice, beef broth. One pan. Forty minutes. The dish scales for a week of leftovers and asks nothing of the cook beyond the initial brown-and-saute.
The procedure: brown a pound of ground beef in a deep skillet. Add diced onion, green and red bell pepper, four garlic cloves, sweat five minutes. Stir in a tablespoon of chili powder, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of smoked paprika. Add a fifteen-ounce can of tomato sauce, two cups of beef broth, a cup of long-grain white rice, a teaspoon of sugar, salt, pepper. Cover, simmer twenty-five minutes. Stir in a half-cup of frozen corn for the last three minutes. Top with cilantro and a squeeze of lime. Dustin had three plates. I had two. The leftovers carried us through Tuesday.
Spanish Rice Dinner
Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef (or ground turkey)
- 1 cup long-grain white rice, uncooked
- 1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
- 1 can (8 oz) tomato sauce
- 1 cup beef broth (or water)
- 1 small yellow onion, diced
- 1 green bell pepper, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese (optional, for topping)
Instructions
- Brown the meat. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, cook the ground beef, breaking it apart, until no longer pink, about 5–7 minutes. Drain excess fat.
- Soften the vegetables. Add the diced onion and green bell pepper to the skillet with the beef. Cook for 3–4 minutes until softened. Stir in the garlic and cook 1 minute more.
- Season and toast. Stir in the chili powder, cumin, salt, and pepper. Add the uncooked rice and stir to coat it in the seasonings, letting it toast for about 1 minute.
- Add the liquids. Pour in the diced tomatoes (with their juices), tomato sauce, and beef broth. Stir everything together and bring to a boil.
- Simmer covered. Reduce heat to low, cover the skillet with a tight-fitting lid, and cook for 20–22 minutes, until the rice is tender and the liquid is absorbed. Check at 18 minutes and add a splash of water if needed.
- Rest and serve. Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork, top with shredded cheddar if using, and serve straight from the pan.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 420 | Protein: 28g | Fat: 14g | Carbs: 44g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 680mg