Rice bowl Latin America-style
€5.05 │ €1.26 per portion │ Serves 4 │ 30-45mins
Delicious and customisable! Latin rice bowls are healthy, satisfying, and offer variety for any meal plan. This is a flexible, fast, and easy to make recipe which goes with plenty of meal combinations, from black beans to fried eggs and more.
Explore this base recipe for Latin American-style rice bowls with ideas for combinations. For Asian rice bowls, check out this recipe!
What to serve it with?
Latin rice bowls are great on their own, and usually pretty filling with toppings like avocado, fried plantain, or fried eggs.
Leftovers
Spoonfeed meal plans save you money by using the economy of scale. Making extra from dinner into a leftover lunch avoids spending money and extra time cooking!
Rice bowls are perfect for leftovers! It is great eaten cold or reheated the next day. Just make sure not to reheat rice more than once.
Utensils
- Saucepan
- Frying pan
- Baking tray
- Wooden spatula
- Serving spoon
Base Ingredients
- 250g short-grain rice
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves
- 1 spring onion
- 1 tbsp sour cream
- 1 tbsp hot sauce (optional)
Buff up your Latin rice bowl with some classic ingredients. Here's some of what you could do:
- Fried eggs: Easy to add on top +€0.33 per egg
- Plantain: Ripe? Slice lengthways and pan-fry. Unripe? Slice thick chunks, carefully smush them into a disc and pan-fry +€0.75
- Sweetcorn: Simply add on top +€0.85
- Salsa criolla: cut red onion and red pepper into very thin strips. Add fresh coriander, 1 tsp chili flakes (optional, we use ground ají amarillo), 1 tsp olive oil. Let rest for at least 10mins +€1.13
- Kidney beans: Make stewed as below or simply pan-fry with the spices then mash completely into refried beans +€1.30
- Sweetcorn creamed: Pan-fry for 2-3mins in olive oil, then add to a bowl with 1 minced garlic clove, 1 diced spring onion, 2 tbsp mayonnaise, 2 tbsp sour cream, the juice of 1 lime +€2.14
- Black beans: Sauté 1 diced red onion in olive oil for 1-2mins until it takes colour, then add 1 tbsp tomato purée and 400g black beans. After 2 minutes, add around 200ml of boiling vegetable stock - just enough to cover. Add 1 tsp chili pepper, 1 tsp of paprika, 1 tsp of cumin, 1 tsp oregano. Mix well and cover on low heat. Before serving lightly mash some of the beans to thicken +€2.16
- Avocado: Easy to add on top +€2.52
Method
- Boil the kettle, enough for the broth and the rice. Rinse rice in a sieve until the water runs clear. Mince 2 cloves of garlic.
- In the saucepan for the rice, sauté in 2 tbsp olive oil the garlic. When just starting to brown, add rice and mix fast to coat in oil. Then cover with boiling water, about 2cm higher than the rice.
- Put the lid on the rice and bring to a boil. Once boiling, keep on low heat for 12 minutes. Don't remove the lid. After that time, turn off the heat. Leave the lid on to steam for at least 5 minutes.
- While your rice is cooking, prepare any of your combination sides.
- Take the lid off the rice and fluff with fork. Lay a bed of rice on each bowl, serving a mix of preparations on top. Top with green of the spring onion, sour cream, hot sauce, and serve.
- Enjoy!