Food - Drink
The Unconventional Way To Season Rice With A Punch Of Flavor
By MEGGAN ROBINSON
No matter which variety of rice you're making, all of them need to be cooked in some sort of liquid, which presents you with an opportunity to introduce flavor to a grain that might be a bit tasteless. Cooking your rice in broth is a no-brainer, but there's another liquid that is often thrown away, but can make for spectacular rice.
Instead of dumping the brine from your pickles, capers, or feta cheese, you can add some of it to the water you use to cook your rice for a tangy and savory flavor; just be sure to account for the water-to-rice ratio with every portion of brine you use. The juice from kosher dill pickles in particular adds salty and garlicky notes to your rice.
You can even mix up a preserved lemon and pickle brine vinaigrette with your rice, or you can take it a step further and cook the brine with rice and butter in a skillet to make a crispy, crunchy dish, instead of the usual soft and plain rice. Raising the flavorful brine from preserved products is definitely a better, tastier solution than wasting it.