Mushroom Rice

Rice sides are usually filler. Not this one. Think a full pound of mushrooms browned hard in butter and garlic, with the rice cooked in the same pan so it picks up every bit of it. That’s my Mushroom Rice. One pan, 30 minutes, savory enough to eat on its own.

Most mushroom rice recipes goes wrong in the first 5 minutes, and it’s always the same thing. The mushrooms go into the pan with everything else, they let go of all their water, and then they sit there boiling in it instead of browning.

So they go in by themselves, in a hot pan, and they stay there until the liquid has cooked off and the edges have gone properly brown. That’s where the entire flavor of this dish comes from.

Everything after that is pilaf, which is a fancy word for a very old method. Cook your aromatics, toast the rice in the fat, add broth, cover it, and then leave it alone. The leaving it alone part is not optional and I’m going to bring it up again later.

• Mushrooms (1 pound, cremini or white, sliced): A full pound. It looks like far too many going into the pan and it cooks down to about a third of that, so hold your nerve. Cremini have more flavor, white are cheaper, a mix is lovely.
• Butter (2 tablespoons, unsalted) and olive oil (2 tablespoons): Both, and they’re not interchangeable. The butter is there for flavor, the oil keeps it from burning at the heat you need to brown mushrooms properly.
• Onion (1 small, chopped): Goes in first and cooks until it’s soft and see through.
• Garlic (3 cloves, minced): In after the onion, 30 seconds, and then move on. It burns fast at this heat and burnt garlic is not a flavor you can hide.
• Italian seasoning (1 tablespoon): A whole tablespoon, which is more than it sounds like. I use my own Italian Seasoning blend because I always have a jar of it going.
• Salt (½ teaspoon) and pepper (½ teaspoon): In with the mushrooms, which actually helps pull their water out faster.
• Long grain rice (1 cup, rinsed and drained): Rinse it until the water runs clear. That takes off the surface starch and it’s the whole difference between fluffy grains and a sticky lump. Basmati and jasmine both work. Short grain doesn’t, it’s far too starchy for this.
• Vegetable broth (2 cups): The 1 to 2 ratio is what makes this work, so measure it rather than eyeballing it. Chicken broth is fine if you’re not keeping it vegetarian.
• Fresh parsley (¼ cup, chopped): Right at the end, stirred through with a fork. It isn’t decoration, it’s the fresh green note that stops the whole thing tasting heavy.

Cook the onion: Melt the 2 tablespoons butter with the 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add the chopped onion and cook about 3 minutes, until it’s gone soft and see through.

Add the garlic: Stir in the 3 minced garlic cloves and give it 30 seconds, just until you can smell it. Don’t go and check your phone here.

Brown the mushrooms: Add the full pound of sliced mushrooms with the ½ teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper and 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning. They’ll let out a surprising amount of water almost immediately, which is normal and not a sign anything’s gone wrong. Keep them going about 5 minutes, until that liquid has cooked away completely and the mushrooms have started browning at the edges. Don’t move on until the pan looks dry. If there’s still liquid in there, the rice comes out soggy and you’ll be sad about it.

Add the rice and broth: Stir in the 1 cup of rinsed rice so every grain gets coated in all that buttery, mushroomy fat, then pour in the 2 cups of vegetable broth. Bring it up to a boil.

Cover and leave it: Reduce to a simmer, lid on, 15 minutes. Do not lift the lid. Do not stir it. I know it’s tempting and I know you want to check on it. Every time that lid comes off you let out the steam that’s doing the actual cooking.

Finish: Take the lid off, add the ¼ cup of chopped parsley, and fluff it with a fork rather than a spoon. A fork separates the grains, a spoon squashes them. Taste it and add salt if it wants some.

Pilaf sounds like something you’d order rather than make. It’s actually just a method, it’s a few hundred years old, and it’s the reason this comes out as separate fluffy grains instead of a pot of paste.

• The rice gets toasted in fat first. Stirring that cup of rice into the buttery mushroom pan before any liquid goes in coats every single grain. The coating slows down how fast each grain drinks, which is what stops them bursting and going sticky. It takes 30 seconds and it’s the step everybody skips.
• The ratio is not a suggestion. 1 cup of rice, 2 cups of liquid. This isn’t pasta where you can be generous and drain the extra. Every drop has to get absorbed, so the measuring cup is genuinely part of the recipe. Sorry.
• The lid stays on. The rice at the top of the pan is cooking in trapped steam, not in liquid. Take the lid off and the steam leaves, and then your top layer is crunchy while the bottom has gone to mush. 15 minutes, hands off, go do something else.

Learn this once and you can make any rice pilaf for the rest of your life, which feels like a decent return on 4 paragraphs.

• Brown rice: Different recipe, I’m afraid. It wants about 2½ cups of liquid and 45 minutes instead of 15. Everything else stays exactly the same, but don’t try it with these numbers and hope.
• Make it vegan: Olive oil or a vegan butter in place of the butter, and keep the vegetable broth. That’s it, that’s the whole change.
• Different mushrooms: Shiitake go deeper and almost meaty. Portobello work sliced thin. Oyster mushrooms crisp up beautifully at the edges. Any of them, or all of them at once, which is my preference when the store cooperates.
• Add protein: Shredded rotisserie chicken stirred in at the end, or brown some Italian sausage before the onions go in. For the proper version of that second one, I’ve already got a Skillet Sausage and Mushroom Rice.
• A splash of wine: ¼ cup of dry white after the mushrooms have browned, cooked off before the broth goes in. Then drop the broth to 1¾ cups so the ratio stays honest.
• Cheesy: A handful of grated Parmesan through it at the end with the parsley. Not traditional. Not sorry.

Fridge: 4 days in an airtight container.

Freezer: 3 months, and cooked rice freezes far better than people expect. Cool it completely first and freeze it flat in a bag so it thaws in minutes rather than hours.

Reheating: This is where cooked rice usually gets ruined. Add a tablespoon of water or broth per cup of rice, cover it, and warm it gently. The steam brings it right back. Reheated dry and uncovered, it turns into little pellets and there’s no saving it.

Make ahead: Brown the mushrooms and onions a day early and keep them in the fridge, then pick up at the rice step when you want dinner.

More rice:

• Greek Rice
• Yellow Rice
• Skillet Sausage and Mushroom Rice
• One Pot Cheesy Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole

More mushrooms:

• Mushroom Risotto
• Cream of Mushroom Soup
• Red Wine Mushrooms
• Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms
• Chicken and Mushroom Rice Bake on Craving Home Cooked

To serve it with:

• Pan Seared Steak
• Chicken Francese