22 Recipes Using Rice From Your Pantry
Today I have 22 recipes using rice from your pantry. I think with the price of groceries these days we all need to add rice to our pantry and food storage stash. I’m sure several of you have lots of rice, I know I do. My favorite rice is sticky rice. I have yet to conquer how to use chopsticks, but my grandkids love using them. Here’s the deal, we can cook rice on the stove with water and stand close so it doesn’t boil over. We can use a rice cooker, a pressure cooker, or an Instant Pot to cook rice without having to watch it, so to speak. I love it when I can set-and-forget meals, using rice included.
Mark loves a bowl of plain white rice covered with a little milk and sugar for breakfast. When I cook white rice I use 3 cups water to 2 cups rice. You will want to check the bags or containers you purchase. My favorite rice is Jasmine White Rice. I buy it at Walmart and it comes in yellow packages. Because we have critters where we live I store my yellow bags in containers that say Commercial Rubbermaid square plastic buckets that come with lids.
I bought them at Sam’s Club at least 15 years ago and they are the perfect container. They hold two bags of rice. I can no longer buy 50-pound bags for just the two of us. I also store long-grain white rice from Honeyville Grain.
I don’t store brown rice because it has such a high oil content it goes rancid too quickly for me, as in 12 months. Honeyville Grain sells a Parboiled White Rice I quote from their website: “Use for any rice dish, it makes it healthier than using regular white rice. Parboiled rice cooks up just like white and brown rice, but has a firmer, less sticky texture that most people prefer.”
Here’s the deal, my rationale is this if I have rice and beans and a garden or cans of fruit and veggies, and of course water, I can survive any disaster. I remember adding a little more rice to stretch tacos with hamburger meat or soups. What’s not to love about using rice every day of the week?
Recipes Using Rice
If you need to stretch your budget, rice is the real deal. Here are some great ways to use rice, is your mouth watering yet? Just make a pot of rice and add a few of these items to make a meal.
- Butter, salt, and pepper
- Milk and sugar
- Creamy gravy or a white sauce with browned butter
- Cinnamon and brown sugar
- Cooked chopped carrots and broccoli flowerets
- Cooked onions and bell peppers
- Pine nuts and balsamic vinegar
- Cilantro and a little lime juice
- Scrambled eggs with cooked bacon bits
- Peas with butter, salt, and pepper
- Black beans
- Pinto beans
- Salsa
- Homemade Chili
- Chicken with broccoli
- Fresh chopped tomatoes from the garden
- Green beans and sliced almond
- Spanish rice, just add salsa and spices when you cook the rice
- Fried rice with scrambled eggs and leftover meat
- Add some rice to your morning brunch quiche
- Rice pudding
- Rice salad with freshly chopped veggies and a little olive oil, or drizzle some balsamic vinegar
The next time you go to the store grab a bag or two of rice and start using rice at least once or twice a week to stretch your food budget. Thanks again for being prepared for the unexpected. May God bless our world.
We love rice. We eat rice often. And of course we store it. Thanks for these ideas Linda.
Hi Rita, thank you, I am trying to show people we don’t have to have fancy meals and yet having a bowl of rice with some added ingredients is yummy and healthy! Linda
Gosh Linda,
I though we were going to get 22 printable recipes for our recipe box. I can add cooked rice to just about any recipe, but that does not mean it will taste good. For instance, I cannot imagine putting cooked rice in my Guacamole recipe or a fruit salad. LOL!!!
Actually, I meant to say “I thought” rather than “I though.” Spell check did not help this time. LOL!!
Hi, Harry, I thought about writing out 22 printable recipes but rice is so versatile, I thought we could use some new ideas on what to add to a cheap bowl of white rice. Fruit salad, not so much! I do add guacamole to my bowl of rice, LOL! Linda
Okay, Linda, you are forgiven. LOL!!! Just kidding. How about taking a can of Wolf brand chili (nutritiously awful, I know) adding a cup of cooked white parboiled rice, a can of Grabill cooked ground beef and a can of unsalted tomato sauce? That would tone down the sodium and fat content in the chili and make it a little more nutritious with the added ground beef. Just a suggestion for a real quick meal if you add a dinner salad.
Hi, Harry, LOL! Now that sounds like a meal to me! Add some salsa and I’m good! Linda
Actually, fruit salad (fresh or in the form of canned fruit cocktail) combined with rice can be quite delicious. Mixed with whipped
cream, Cool
Whip, or a batch of Dream Whip (dry whipped topping that stores well), add cooked rice and fruit…Bing0! You have a yummy dish great for breakfast, dessert or as a salad. This was a popular picnic or potluck gem when I was a youngest in the 60’s, my grandchildren are now enjoying it as “grandma’s special salad”.
Hi, Idella, oh my gosh I remember the Dream Whip! I have got to try that rice, fruit cocktail and whipped cream! That sounds very familiar. I love this!! Linda
Lentils are another good choice, since they cook in the same time as rice, so that makes things easier. I’m not a big fan of lentils, but I still have a 5 gallon bucket with the lentils stored in 1 gallon mylar bags, just in case… FYI – rice with lentils is a complete protein, so you can subsist on it for a long time. Especially if you have multivitamins for micro nutrients.
My wife and I are always supplementing our dinners with rice, usually plain white rice, but occasionally spiced up. For fried rice (which we do at least twice a month), we include some peas, garlic powder and soy sauce to spice it up as well as the leftover meat and scrambled eggs. A batch of fried rice and some dumplings makes a great “take out” meal at home or just the fried rice and a bowl of soup. Yum.
Thanks for some nice ideas for inexpensive meals.
Hi, dmwalsh, my mom used to make dumplings I need to make some of those! I have lentils, I forgot about those, they would be good with rice. I have to stretch my food budget, I remember years ago buying 1/2 beef (many years ago) and it would last a year for our family of six. We all need some inexpensive meals, we hardly buy meat now. The price of groceries is ridiculous. I decided to go vegetarian when the meat no longer appealed to me. Yep, rice is yummy! Here’s to saving money! Linda
We love rice around here, too. The grandkids always want sweet rice when they come here ravenous after school, and ours is vegan with cinnamon, coconut oil, and soymilk. Better get a batch ready in the InstantPot!
Hey girlfriend,
I am storing rice and thought you could tell us just how long we can store it if it is white rice. And should it be kept in a special container, etc?
Love your rice meals. I am at this very moment eating a tablespoon of Golden rice that is cooked up with onions, peppers and a tad of chicken. I have put the two tablespoons into a cup of boullion and mixed it up for a delicious lunch time soup. So I use my left over rice just for that purpose. Sometimes I add chopped up asperagus that is beginning to wilt or any other veggie that is a leftover. It is filling and low in calories but very satisfying.
Hope all is well with you and your lovely family. We are good here in Cincinnati Ohio. Fall is heading in and we are preparing our gardens for next year. Well at least my neighbors are. HA!
love
Vivian M.
Hi, Vivian, you are so nice, I’m eating a lot of rice these days. Well, actually for many years. It stretches a meal and fills the belly. I store my white rice in its original bag then I place them inside a plastic 5-gallon bucket with an air-tight Gamma Lid. I also buy #10 cans of rice that are commercially processed. My cans from Honeyville (white long grain rice) store 10-15 years in my #10 cans. My buckets I would say 4-5 years. Here’s the deal, I’m sure we would still eat the white rice even after 4-5 years. But I only buy enough for one year because I like my rice sticky. I learned a secret from an Asian restaurant here. I asked how do you keep your rice so sticky. She said we have to have fresh rice. She said they buy new bags and mix one new bag in with one old so the rice stays sticky. So this is why I only buy enough for one year that Mark and I eat every day. I have several #10 cans of white rice I will never go hungry as long as I have water! I have never been to Cincinnati, I bet it’s beautiful, girlfriend! Hugs, Linda
Love rice. It’s a go to when I don’t kknow what I want to eat. It’s filling aand good.
Hi Bebe, I am fixing a pot of rice as I write this, it sure is filling and tastes yummy! Linda
Any one how would you cook rice in a pressure cooker???
Hi, Tom do you have an electric pressure cooker? They typically have a button that says “rice”. Here is my printable grain chest that may help you. https://www.foodstoragemoms.com/2017/01/use-quick-easy-pressure-cookers/#more-59435 Tom, at the very bottom there are printable sheets for pressure cooking. The post also talks about the slow release and quick release methods for electric pressure cookers. Linda
I like rice and am crazy about fried rice with bits of meat, onion, green onions, scrambled egg, bean sprouts and so on. Toss in an eggroll and I’n in heaven. Rice cooked in broth or bullion with onions is good or some canned peas and carrots maybe corn is a nice side dish. I’m with you on rice as a versatile food.
Only problem is that rice as well as noodles are high on the glycemic index and are also carbohydrates along with potatoes, breads, and peas…. not good for some or people on certain diets. But I do eat all of these foods in moderation. Besides just being good, they happen to be inexpensive foods. And if you read labels and shop around you can find good or better choices. The spaghetti noodles we buy state that they are low on the glycemic index. Gotta read those labels 🙂
I will confess, I have eaten left over ground beef or frozen burritos, etc., with rice and potato salad. It’s a darn wicked indulgence…. LOL
Hi Frank, I love those darn wicked indulgences!! We could so be neighbors, my friend! I could eat fried rice and egg rolls every week. Throw in some Mexican food and I’m set! Great comment! Linda