I had my first taste of Rice-A-Roni® in college (oh those wild, experimental days of youth!). It was pretty good but a bit pricey for my budget at 59 cents a box. Now it’s 1.39 a box, and I don’t really need to get 31% of my daily intake of sodium from a simple side dish.

But I also need something ready to go; RaR is pretty quick. I decided to trade quick in for planned-ahead, did a search, and finally found a way to cook rice in a crock pot. I’d tried just guessing on my own or following random recipes online, but these experiments usually failed quite mushily. But I found a working one here. The blogger decided to make use of her crock pot every single day this year, and had just done white rice.

I took the recipe and ran with it, making rice pretty well a couple of times before venturing into Spanish Rice (like she did, just last week!). Once I was sure I had the crock pot part down, I worked on combining the two recipes, and it worked!

CrockPot Spanish Rice

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1 cup rice (I like long grain white)
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups water
3 chicken or vegetable cubes (I used Telma brand - they look bigger than the Knorr ones I used to buy)
1 tomato (about the size of your closed fist)
1/5 cup sliced onion (or more to taste)

Put the bullion cubes into water and let sit while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Dice onion and tomato (as chunky or as fine as you’d like: I usually chop them smaller than my pinky nail).

Start 1 tablespoon butter in a pan on the stove (cast iron for me). Take the second tablespoon of butter and grease the bottom and side of the crock pot.

As the first pat melts, add the rice to brown and the vegetables to sweat. Stir briskly 1 or 2 min until rice is browned (pretend it’s Rice-a-Roni). Pour a little water into the pan to cool the rice (it will sear up), then slosh the rice and vegetables into the crockpot.

Add the rest of the water and the bullion to the crockpot. Set the timer for 2 and a half hours, cook on high. Stir the rice and water once about 45 minutes in to distribute the rest of the bullion powder. Check the cooker every 15 minutes after 2 hours for the doness of the rice. My crock and sea level makes it perfect at 2 hours, but your mileage may vary.

I did brown rice the other night, Mahatma brand, not sure of the variety. It came out … okay. A little stickier than I liked, but it worked out okay.

While crocking rice ahead (either the night before or a few hours before dinner) is useful, my rice cooker/veggie steamer is better/faster for weeknight meals. What kills me is the preparation time. By the time I roll into the house, unload the kids and my gear, then wander into the kitchen, I’ve spent 20 minutes on minutia instead of dinner. More likely I’ll just plan ahead for weeknights, measuring out the rice and water, setting up the steamer and throwing it all into gear the moment I get home.

*Shown with teeny and regular meatballs from other crock adventures