Hey guys welcome back to Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen. Today I’m going to teach you how to make Mediterranean or Middle Eastern brown rice. Now this rice is served with kebabs and kefta. It’s served with a lot of the Middle Eastern stew. It’s really healthy and I’ve perfected this recipe. I had a difficult time making brown rice at first but this recipe is pretty much full proof. You’re going to love it.
What you’re going to need is four cups of water. You will also going to need a half cup of thin egg noodles. They’re really, really, really thin and you’ll see it when I’m putting them together. You’re also going to need two cups of brown rice, either Jasmine or Basmati. Now I get my brown rice at Trader Joe’s but they carry a lot of the local grocery stores as well. You’re also going to need a half teaspoon of salt, a fourth teaspoon of black pepper, and one vegetable bouillon cube. If you like chicken bouillon, you can use that. If you like beef bouillon, you can use that. I like to use vegetable bouillon. Now I’m going to show you how to put all these together.
Now what I have is a pot, it’s about, let’s see a two-quarter pot. You want to make sure it has a lid. I’m going to warm it up on low and I’m going to add two tablespoons of vegetable oil. What we’re going to do first is we’re going to brown the thin egg noodles. See how thin they are? Now when you’re doing this step of the process, you want to make sure that you keep it on low heat, because what happens is, these noodles, they brown very fast if you have it on high heat. So just let them brown. You’ll see that they’ll start to change color slowly. This step of the process takes a couple of minutes. You don’t want to walk away from the oven because if you do, they may burn. They burn very fast.
Now you see that it’s starting to boil, just like that? And you can see that they’re starting to change color. So, with the spatula, just turn them over because you want them to color evenly, or almost evenly. Not every noodle is going to be the exact color as the other one. So see, lightly browning, you want to keep mixing them.
Now if you don’t like to use brown rice and if you just can’t stand the taste of brown rice, you can use white rice and make sure it’s a long grain rice. Now just like that. All my noodles are almost the same color and they’re a light brown.
What you’re going to do next, and be careful, step away a little bit, is add, you’re going to add the four cups of water. Every cup of rice needs two cups of water. So if you’re just making enough rice for you and your spouse, you may want to use one cup of rice and two cups of water.
At this point, I’m going to add the veggie bouillon and I’m going to bring the rice to a boil. At this point you want to turn the heat up to about medium high and just wait until the water comes to a boil.
Water’s come to a boil, so what we’re going to do next, we’re going to turn it back down to low heat. Turn it all the way down, as low as your oven can go. And then I’m going to add the two cups of brown rice. Just stir them in. You’re going to add your half teaspoon of salt and black pepper. Now the bouillon has already salt in it so if you’re thinking that’s not enough salt to your, of course you can add more, but the bouillon has salt so you don’t want to over salt it. It’s always better to have less salt than too much salt because if you have too much salt, then you can’t even eat the dish. So stir it up a little and you’re going to cover it.
Now, you’re going to cover it and you’re going to let it sit on low heat for about 45 minutes. In between, at maybe 15 or 20-minute intervals, you’re going to want to stir the rice a little bit. Just so all the ingredients, you make sure they all get stirred in, If you like, you can add, at this point, add about a teaspoon of butter. Now we’ve already used the vegetable oil so that’s enough fat in it, but if you want, some people like butter with them.
Now I have some already prepared, so I’m going to show you what the end product looks like. You’re going to want to fluff it up with a fork. And it’s going to double in size. Can you see now that the noodles are not as firm and the rice is completely fluffed up? Now, I’m going to show you how to plate it.
Plating it is really easy. If you’re serving kebabs with it, you can plate that alongside the kebabs. If you’re serving a stew with it, you can serve it in a separate plate. What you want to do, oops, pour some down. For garnishing it, you’re going to want a couple teaspoons of finely chopped fresh parsley, and some sumac. Let’s get the parsley, sprinkle it on top, this doesn’t literally add too much flavor, this is to garnishment. And then, leave about a half to a quarter teaspoon of the sumac and there you go. That’s it. You have Middle Eastern Mediterranean Brown Rice with noodles. It’s a great dish. It’s an alternative to white rice. It’s very healthy. It’s not fattening and you and your friends are going to love it.
Join me again for Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen.