Rice Dressing / Dirty Rice

I got an urge yesterday for a big pan of dirty rice. Coming from Appalachia, I’m still not entirely sure what the difference between dirty rice and rice dressing is; I’ve seen what looked to be the same dish called both things. Since I was serving it up as a main dish instead of like dressing with something else, I’ll just call it dirty rice, which has such a good ring anyway. 😉

I didn’t get any photos, since I started this blog after there was a sad little leftover pile of rice left in the pan, but it turned out as good as I was hoping. Most of what you’d have seen, anyway, was an impression of, erm, dirty brownness with some flecks of green onion breaking it up a little. Pretty it ain’t, until you start thinking about the flavor. 🙂

My husband doesn’t like liver at all, so I didn’t put any in there. A few chopped up chicken livers does make the taste more complex.

Last Night’s Dirty Rice

• 1/2 lb. (or 200-250g) ground beef
• 1/2 lb. (or 200-250g) Quick basic sausage-alike
• A chopped onion
• 2 stalks chopped celery
• 1/2 a chopped sweet pepper (we had half a yellow one sitting there)
• 2-4 cloves minced garlic (mmm, garlic!)
• A bay leaf
• 1 tbsp. oil, if your meat is lean enough to stick to the pan

In a deep skillet, fry everything but the garlic up together until the meat is starting to brown and the vegetables are nicely wilted, then throw in the garlic and let it fry for a few minutes longer.

• 2 c. (or 500mL) beef broth (I used a Kallo cube)
• About a tbsp. of GF soy sauce for extra richness
• 1/2 tsp. ground pepper
• 1/2 tsp. ground cayenne,  or less if you don’t like it hot
• 1/2 – 1 tsp. red pepper flakes, ditto!
• 1.5-2 tsp. mixed herbs (or you can use a mixture of marjoram and thyme)
• 3 tbsp. very dark GF roux
• Small pinch of sugar for extra complexity

Add these ingredients to the fried meat and vegetable mixture, to make your sauce.

At this point, you will probably want to start your pot of rice, if you’re living close enough to sea level that it really does take 20 minutes to cook. Back home, at a higher elevation, I’d have started it while the meat and veggies were frying, for 30-35 minutes cooking time.

Let the sauce simmer, covered, for about half an hour, stirring occasionally. Take the lid off and let some of the water reduce out, if it isn’t a fairly thin gravy consistency. (Add a little water if it’s too thick.) You want it to be able to coat the rice without being so thick it gets really globby after the rice soaks up some of the liquid. Taste for seasoning. Once it’s mixed in with the rice, it should taste about half as hot as the sauce alone does. At this point, I also threw in some chopped parsley for a little flavor and some color (though it didn’t end up giving that much contrast!).

• 1 – 1.5 c. uncooked long grain rice (I used jasmine), cooked with twice the volume of water and some salt
• Chopped green onion to taste

Mix the hot rice into your hot pan of sauce, and throw in some green onion. You can keep extra green onion to the side for a garnish. Let the dish sit a few minutes, so the flavors can blend some, and enjoy!

Quickie: GF Roux

First, here are some excellent basic instructions on how to make a roux, from Jack Guidry at Cooking Louisiana, including a photographic color chart. I was going to do similar, but he’s got it covered!

When I first went gluten-free, I wasn’t sure what kind of flour would work well for a roux–bit of a problem when you really enjoy Cajun and Creole food! 🙂 So, I experimented.  To cut a long story short: the best I have found is chickpea flour (gram flour/besan).

It’s used to make a roux for both sweet and savory Indian dishes, and it turns out to work just as well in a roux for other cuisines.

The taste is warm and slightly nutty, and the texture of the finished sauce isn’t weird and grainy like I’ve gotten with browned rice flour. I actually prefer the taste to what you get with wheat flour. (But, I never really liked the distinctive flavor of wheat.) And it seems less prone to trying to stick to the bottom of the pan, even though I generally use 1.5 parts of flour to oil by volume.  For oil, I prefer to use fairly neutral ones like sunflower or peanut; butter will scorch in a bitter way if you try to make anything but a really light-colored roux with it, and an olive oil roux makes things taste odd to me (as much as I like olive oil).

Another useful thing is to make at least double what you’ll need for the recipe, and save the rest in a jar in the refrigerator. Especially handy, since I don’t know of any commercial GF  shortcut roux in a jar. 🙂 It should keep for months in the refrigerator, but doesn’t tend to last that long around here!