Hola Mi Gente,
I want to share a recipe with you today that reminds me a lot of my childhood. As I’ve been thinking about this recipe all week, I’ve felt oddly comforted, because it reminded me of how much my parents surrounded us with diversity and rich cultures. Not wealthy rich, but dense and textured and ridiculously flavorfully, rich. I grew up with an army of different Spanish accents in close reach. I was not just gifted with the ability to speak, and read, and enjoy Spanish, but to experience the different intonations and appreciate all the sabores different countries bring to it. What a treasure, y’all. As I type this, I’m feeling all the gratitude for my parents and the way they shaped my childhood to be full of cultura.
One of those gifts, was Puerto Rican culture. Growing up we had some family friends from PR that joined our lives, and we theirs. And man. Am I so glad. Not just because of the food, too. Our Puerto Rican friends (family, really), were always ABOUNDING in joy, ready for a good merengue, and always came in tote with Arroz con Gandules.
To be totally honest with you, I had not thought about this dish in SO long. And I absolutely had never made it on my own. But with a little sleuthing, I got the general idea of the ingredients and started playing around with it, fine tuning it to what I remembered tasting growing up. I cannot explain to you the party that happened on my tastebuds when I tried this dish again a few months ago. It is SO satisfying. So flavorful. And so, so, simple.
Generally when I find a recipe to share with you all, I want to make sure of a few things:
- Is it accessible: is it super allergen-dense? Does it require a lot of skill? Is it out of a weekly budget for groceries?
- Will people want to eat it? Does it look appetizing? Is it easy to pair with other foods?
- Is it new? Will it be a new cooking experience for my followers? Does it invite them to experience new flavors?
This recipe passes all those tests, and THEN, one step further it does this: it revolutionizes the way you think about rice.
I’m going to show my prejudice here, y’all, but, brown people are SO good at rice. We’ve literally taken the blandest ingredient in the world, and gotten it to spin and dance full of flavor.
This is one of those dishes where you will assemble it all together, and at first you’re like: WHY do I have to use so many ingredients to make rice??? And afterwards, you begin googling: can the human body survive on a 95% rice diet??
As a quick suggestion, you’re probably going to want to listen to a little merengue or Marc Anthony salsa as you put this together. If you have no idea what merengue is, and don’t have Marc Anthony on your kitchen music rotation, first of all, I’m sorry. This music just makes cooking better, because you have no control over the kind of sabor it brings to your life. And because I don’t want you to fail at joy in the kitchen, here’s you a beginner playlist to good Salsas and Merengues.
A note on ingredients:
You maybe haven’t heard of gandules–they are are green pigeon peas. Somewhere between a pea and a bean, these delicious legumes, compounded together with the rice, have become one of the national dishes of Puerto Rico.
There are a few of the ingredients in this recipe that might be in parts of the grocery store you aren’t familiar with. I’ve found though, that most major chains carry Goya products. I typically find the gandules in the canned bean section of the grocery store. The seasonings of Adobo and the Sazon with Annatto and Coriander are usually in the international food section. If you’re feeling adventurous, head to your local Latin American grocery store and you can almost certainly find them there.
A final note before we get to the recipe:
Let’s talk about raspadito real quick. Raspadito is the perfect crispy rice at the bottom of the pan–it isn’t burnt, but it isn’t mushy. Personally, this might be my favorite part of arroz con gandules. And every Puerto Rican I know, loves raspadito.
In order to get that little crisp at the bottom of the pan, I like to use a good bit of oil in this rice, and I literally never stir it once it gets cooking. I uncover it around 20 minutes to see if its done cooking, and then raise the heat for 2-3 minutes before turning the heat off and this gives me the perfect crisp on the bottom of the pan, that I can then mix together and evenly disperse so that these miniature bites of joy can be enjoyed throughout all the rice. Another trick, is to cook your rice in a wide sauce pan, or even an electric skillet like I did, because it gives you more surface area to crisp up.
love, love, love and muchoooo sabor,
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Arroz con Gandules
Ingredients
- 4 TBSP Avocado Oil
- 1 Small Onion Diced
- 1/2 TSP Goya Adobo All purpose Seasoning
- 3 Oz Tomato Paste
- 2 C Long Grain Rice
- 1.5 TSP Salt
- 2 Packets Goya Sazon con Achiote y Annatto
- 3 C Water
- 1 Can Gandules
Instructions
- Heat oil in a small sauce pan over medium heat, and add in the onion. Cook onion until translucent and add in adobo seasoning, tomato paste, rice, salt, and goya sazon con achiote y annatto, until it is all combined. Add in the water and gandules. Bring to a boil, and then lower heat and cover until rice is fully cooked (about 20 minutes). Once rice is cooked, raise heat for 2-3 minutes to crisp rice on the bottom of the pan, and then turn off heat. Serve and enjoy warm!
Mary-Beth Johnson
Mary-Beth is a creative, food-obsessed, Georgia transplant living Chicago. She is proudly and fiercely Latina, and more specifically Chapina. In her day to day she is a food educator to students around Chicagoland aged 3 to 80+, both virtually and in-person. She is passionate about cultivating the truth that every person has an understanding of food that deserves being brought to the table, and that time in the kitchen can be sacred, passionate, and an act of love for self and others. Outside the kitchen you can find her at the intersections of infertility, chronic illness, and a deep love for the dignity of all humans. She hopes to create a space that is holistic about the role of food in the social, political, relational, and physiological dynamics of our world.
