Tex Mex Restaurant-Style "Mexican" Rice Recipe

[Saviolo]

This recipe will be familiar to anyone who's frequented any kind of Tex Mex restaurant. That reddish-coloured rice you get on the side of the plate (usually microwaved) next to your enchiladas or burrito, and usually pretty dry. It's actually pretty easy to make at home, though it does require a few extra steps! Mostly, you need to make a sofrito, which is a pureed blend of tomato, onion, garlic, and chilis. Cook that down and add it to the rice that you're cooking, and it will infuse the rice with a lot of flavour as well as the familiar colour.

We made this recipe in a rice maker, and it came out really well, but you can make this with whatever method you usually use to prepare rice. We definitely recommend rinsing your rice for this recipe, as it will make the final product much nicer, and keep the grains from sticking together.

[Warpy]

1. Tomatoes are used relatively little here in NM

and rice is infused with paprika or mild red chile powder.

Tomatoes don't grow all that well in an arid climate, all we generally see in supermarkets are those hard pink things that taste like cardboard, so everything from rice to vegetable soup uses mild red chile instead of tomatoes or tomato sauce/juice.