Reader GritsinMontana kindly sent us her recipe for Dirty Rice.
Ingredients
- 1 pound meat (ground beef, chicken, or sausage)
- 1/2 pound chicken livers (traditional but optional)
- 1 cup white rice
- 1.5 cups chicken broth
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 1-2 bell peppers, finely chopped
- 3-4 stalks celery, finely chopped
- A bit of butter or olive oil
- Thyme, dried or fresh
- One Bayleaf. (Remove after cooking.)
- Garlic, 2-3 cloves, minced
- Salt, 2-3 teaspoons
And these three peppers, to taste:
- White pepper (start with 1 tsp)
- Black pepper (start with 1 tsp)
- Red pepper (start with 1/2 tsp)
Directions
- Wash your hands!
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Pull your 10 inch cast iron skillet out of the cabinet and set it on the stove top.
- Sauté thyme, bay leaf, and garlic in a pat or two of butter or a couple tablespoons of olive oil.
- Then add your meat(s) and cook thoroughly.
- Now add all the finely chopped veggies to the skillet. (You can omit veggies you don’t like or substitute amounts of veggies based on what you have lying around. Everything will be just fine in the end.)
- After the veggies begin to wilt down, add your rice and continue to sauté for a while until the rice just barely begins to show some brown.
- Now add the broth, salt, and the white, black, and red pepper.
- Stir slightly to mix the salt and pepper into the broth evenly. (We like it spicy so we increase the red pepper.)
- Cook just until the stock is hot.
- Place skillet (un-covered) in the preheated 400 degree oven for approximately 18-20 minutes.
- Remove from oven.
This recipe should roughly fit into a 10 inch cast iron skillet. If you use a larger skillet just increase portions accordingly, ensuring you always use a ratio of 1 cup of rice to 1.5 cups of broth to roughly 1 pound of ground meat of your choice. (Rice triples in volume so keep that in mind when you decide to use a larger skillet and larger volumes.)
SERVING
Rice should be very flaky and completely done. Feed this comfort food to anybody you love. It can be served as a side dish or as a main meal (with greens of some sort on the side). And remember to smile, since you only dirtied up one skillet.
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Grits in Montana! Dirty Rice is delicious, and very popular in our part of the country. We bypass the liver, and go with a combination of hamburger and ground sausage — but many make the dish in the traditional way, and love it just as much! Thanks so much for sharing this tasty recipe!
This was popular where I grew up too! When I was raising my family, I made this dish often because it was so economical and healthy. I could easily use up whatever veggies I had available, and the leftovers were easy to warm up and send to school in a thermos. Today, my grown child considers this “comfort food” and also makes this dish very often.