Recipe: Cajun Rice Dressing / Cajun Dirty Rice, Chicken-Flavored Rice Mix

I hate cooking during the week, and often put several varieties of dishes in the fridge on the wekend for a quick reheat during the week.

Zatarain's brand box-rice mixes save beautifully in the fridge for an entire week, and reheat very well if you just sprinkle a bit of water over it first. Dirty rice is so called, BTW, because originally the New Orleans dish was made with chicken livers and gizzards, and these turned the rice dark. There are no such ingredients in the mix! Its basically cajun spices, ground beef or turkey, and rice. Here's a recipe from a great website I found if Zatarain's isn't carried in your local supermarket (its about $2 a box - good buy).

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Cajun Dirty Rice
From: Karl Zerangue
Date: 16 Sep 1993

Various recipes for this popular dish include lots of different ingredients, such as chicken liver, sausage, endouille, etc. But my Mom's recipe is of course my favorite and quite simple. The following is a close estimate (since no one has ever written down the actual amounts of any ingredients - until now!):

A Cajun Rice Dressing / Cajun Dirty Rice

1 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground beef
1 large bell pepper
1 medium onion
5 - 6 peeled cloves of garlic
1 or 2 fresh, green cayenne peppers (if available)
1 tsp. salt (use to own taste)
1 tsp. red pepper (use to own taste -- balance with fresh pepper above)
2 cans mushroom steak sauce (NOT soup, usual brand I find here is Dawn's; 1 can = about 4-6 oz.)
3-4 cups cooked rice ( not real sure about this amount)

The Dressing Mix:
Pan fry the ground meat well until all of the meat is well done. Put bell pepper, onion and garlic into food processor and "nearly" liquify it, then add this to the meat. The pepper/onion/garlic should sizzle as you stir it well into the the meat. When the sizzling fades, add the mushroom steak sauce and a little water and allow the entire dressing mix to simmer for at least a half hour.

Dirty Rice:
Cooked rice can be added to this mixure and thoroughly stirred. The more rice you add, the drier and "whiter" the resulting dressing will be. Adding the right amount of rice will result in a dress that is moist with the rice
appearing very brown ("dirty").

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The Rice-R-Roni mixes also keep very well in the fridge, and don't need meat to make them a meal. This is a recipe for the mix itself, but the Chicken rice recipe itself follows.

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Chicken-Flavored Rice Mix

Categories: Trail, Supper, Lunch
Servings: 12
Makes about 4 cups of mix

4 cups Uncooked Long Grain Rice
1 tsp Salt
2 tsp Dried Parsley Flakes
4 Tbsp Instant Chicken Bouillon
2 tsp Dried Tarragon
1/4 tsp White Pepper

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Stir until evenly distributed.

Put about 1 1/3 cups into three 1-pint containers and label. Store in a cool, dry place and use within 6 to 8 months.

CHICKEN-FLAVORED RICE:
Mix 1 1/3 cups rice mix with 2 cups cold water and 1 Tb butter or margarine in a medium saucepan. Bring water to a boil over high heat. Cover and reduce the heat and cook for 15 to 25 minutes, until liquid is absorbed. Add canned chicken chunks as desired. Makes 4 to 6 servings.