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Spanish Rice from When Sue Began to Cook

Sue and Ruth Ann learn to make Spanish Rice in 1924
Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: American
Keyword: lesson, rice, Twenties
Servings: 6

Ingredients

  • ⅔ cup rice to make 1½ cups cooked instructions for cooking in recipe
  • ½ cup bacon, cut into small pieces
  • 2 tbsp chopped onion we cut it very fine with the chopper in the wooden bowl
  • 2 tbsp green pepper also chopped fine
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp paprika
  • 2 cups tomato pulp This can be pureed tomatoes or diced tomatoes pureed in a blender or food processor, with part of the juice

Instructions

  • Mother said this was a good time for us to learn to make good boiled rice. (She doesn't think very many people make it right.) She had us each wash two-thirds of a cup of rice by putting it in a fine meshed sieve and holding it under the faucet till the rice was clean. Then we each put five and a third cups of boiling water in a saucepan and added the rice. (Rice ought to be cooked in eight times as much water as there is rice.) Then we added 2/3 of a level teaspoon of salt. (There ought to be a level teaspoon of salt for each cup of rice.) I forgot to say that Mother had us put the rice in the saucepan slowly so the water wouldn't stop bubbling.
  • We boiled the rice (the water bubbling all the time) for twenty minutes by the clock, and stirred it with a fork every once in a while during the cooking. (A fork is better than a spoon because a spoon mashes it down and makes it mushy.)
  • When the rice had cooked long enough, we poured it into a strainer and let the liquid drain off, and then we let cold water from the faucet run through the cooked rice to wash off the extra starch. Then our boiled rice was ready to be used.
  • To make the Spanish Rice, we put the pieces of bacon in a frying pan (of course I mean that Ruth Ann and I each had a frying pan) and when the pan was hot we added the onion and the green pepper. We cooked it all, stirring around all the time with a fork, until the onion was brown.
  • Then we added the salt, paprika, and boiled rice, and kept on cooking and stirring until the rice was light brown. Then we added the tomato pulp and cooked it together for about ten minutes more. It was quite thick by that time. Then it was ready to be poured into hot dishes and served.

Notes

The 2/3 tsp salt in cooking the rice is in addition to the 1 tsp salt that goes into the finished Spanish Rice recipe. Omit the salt from cooking the rice if you like.