Easy Healthy Spanish Rice

Spanish rice used to be one of my husbands favorite dinners when we first got married. I don’t remember exactly how I made it back then but I do remember a lot less quality food involved and perhaps some box spices with preservatives. Needless to say, as I started to incorporate whole organic foods into our day to day lives, Spanish rice fell out of the dinner rotation along with tater tot casserole and other processed food containing dinners that used to frequent our menu.

My hubby was pleasantly surprised when he came home to an old favorite of his when I made this for the first time the other night. I waited in nervous anticipation as he took his first bite… seeing that this was not the same Spanish rice that I used to make him. Thankfully he loved the new healthier version and it will now be a part of our meal planning menu rotation.

This meal is perfect because I almost always have all these ingredients on hand. It also takes less than 30 minutes to cook up on the stove so it’s perfect for nights we are rushing home late but still want a healthy home cooked meal.

White rice often gets a bad rap as being the unhealthy version of brown rice. Yet in reality, both brown and white rice have differing benefits. Brown rice is higher in fiber but white rice is easier to digest. White rice also has lower arsenic levels since white rice is just brown rice with the hull removed and that’s where a good amount of the arsenic is located. If you are as surprised as I was the first time I heard about arsenic in rice you can read more about it here. We try to rotate rice with other carbs so that we don’t over do it. I also rinse my rice before cooking it in an attempt to remove as much of the arsenic as possible. We also try to stick with Basmati white rice from California which has the lowest levels of arsenic of all the rice tested.

That being said, we don’t avoid rice all together, we just limit the amount we eat (kind of like not overdoing tuna fish which is high in mercury).

Now that I’ve completely scared everyone away from eating rice. 😉 here is how I make our Easy Healthier Spanish Rice.

Ingredients:

-1 cup of dry organic white rice

-1 lb grass fed beef

-1/2 container (I used half of a 26.46 ounce Pomi brand box) of chopped tomatoes

-1/2 TBS grass fed butter, coconut oil or olive oil

-1/2 tsp dried onion or 1/2 fresh onion chopped

-1 TBS salt and silicon dioxide free chili powder (or just add less salt if your spice mix has salt already)

-1/2 tsp cumin

-1/2 tsp tumeric

-1/2 tsp garlic powder

-1 tsp sea salt We buy our Redmonds Real Sea Salt from Thrive Market

Directions:

1. In a medium pot, cook 1 cup of dried rice according to directions on bag and set aside.
2. In a medium pan brown one lb of grass fed ground beef at medium/high heat.
3. Once browned, push your beef to the side of your pan so that you can cook your onions.
4. In the same pan that your beef is in add your 1/2 TBS butter (or oil if using that instead) to the side that your beef is not on and let it melt on medium heat.
5. Add the onions to your pan and sauté until golden brown but not burnt.
6. Add chopped tomatoes to the “onion side” of your pan.
7. Add all of your seasoning (chili powder, turmeric, garlic, cumin and sea salt) to the tomatoes.
8. Cook all your seasoning together with the beef, tomatoes and onions in your pan.
9. Add your seasoned beef and tomato mixture to the pot of rice and mix thoroughly together.

There you have it! Easy, healthy Spanish rice! We enjoy ours over lettuce. This would also make a great side on taco night. Yum!

Feel free to leave any comments or questions in the comment section below.

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