Chipotle White Rice

Rice is boring and Chipotle is good.

So rice is cheap. Since it’s cheap, I eat a lot of it. Since I eat a lot of it, it gets… well, boring. (Curse you Dave, you told me this was the path to freedom!)

I’ve found jasmine rice is just objectively tastier than your regular white rice. There are some situations in which it’s probably not as good (like fried rice where you want a more neutral rice) but I still use it constantly. However, it’s still just rice, so we gotta spice that stuff up. Here’s how to turn your regular rice into something a lot better, like Chipotle’s white rice! That stuff is the stuff, and I feel like this recipe pretty accurately replicates it.

What You Need

• A rice cooker (I’m sorry, I’m not talking to you if you don’t have one. Simple as that. Any rice cooker will work, but the Zojirushi is soooo good.)
• Jasmine rice (You can use regular rice if you must, but my Filipino work mom who got me to start eating jasmine rice will likely teleport to your house and slap you for your crimes. It’s your life, risk it if you want)
• Unsalted butter (1 tablespoon per 1/2 cup of rice)
• MSG (1/2 teaspoon per 1/2 cup of rice)
• Fresh chopped parsley (1 tablespoon per 1/2 cup of rice)

How you’re gonna do this thing

Feel free to adjust the ingredients for what you like. Some people aren’t parsley nuts like me, so you might want less. Here’s what you’re going to do.

• Make your rice. I was going to put a Gordon Ramsey video in here but then I realized that his method is like, way more complex and I’m not about to shoot myself in the foot here. Just figure out how to cook rice, please. Thanks 🙂
• Once your rice is done, as in the little switch has popped up to “Warm” or your nice rice cooker has started making happy little beeps, you’re going to take your butter and toss it in there. If you’ve made a bunch of rice (more than a cup or two) cut the butter up so that it can stir in better.
• Add in your MSG and parsley.
• Stir all of it together. You’re going to want to stir until all the butter is incorporated.
• OPTIONAL: If you let it sit in the rice cooker on “Warm” for a few minutes, the outer layer of the rice that touches the pot will crisp up ever so slightly. I love these slightly crispy bits, but that’s just me, don’t feel like you’ve got to do that.

That’s all. This rice is a big step up from your regular old rice. MSG makes everything taste better, and it’s better than salt. The parsley adds a nice amount of color and aromatic. Even though it’s simple, this will really help take your rice up another notch.

Improvements are sometimes really subtle

When it comes to cooking, sometimes the biggest improvements are the smallest things. A dash of this here, a splash of that there… little things can really boost a dish, drink, or whatever. When you’re experimenting in the kitchen, think about small improvements you can make to dishes and try them! Think a seasoning would be interesting in something? Toss it in! If it sucks, now you KNOW it sucks, so you won’t try it again, but what if it doesn’t suck? Then you’ve learned an epic addition, all because you tried it! Don’t be afraid to mess with things, and you might just take something normal and turn it extraordinary!