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Omg this rice is amazing…I made with some leftover brown rice and stir fried with the green paste and added corn..was so delicious!
Rina
It’s green magic!
This week I found a treasure in my school mailbox –> a collection of recipes clipped out from a magazine with a little stickie note from a friend next to one of the recipes that said: green rice? Thank you, food blog, for letting every person in my life know that I love food and allowing them the opportunity to have a food friend who will enjoy things like clippings of magazine recipes in my mailbox. Especially when said recipes are for the best rice of your life. I love this Green Mexican Rice and it’s salty, fluffy, greeny riceyness so, so much.
Plus the corn.
Plus it goes with anything.
Say no more: bowl o’ rice, here I come.
This is not the first time that I’ve been gifted recipes, foodie articles, cooking treasures, or junky cooking treasures (that really are treasures). Totally true story: I walked into a meeting this morning and a coworker passed me a rusty, scratched cooking sheet saved out of her garbage pile. I posted about using old cookie sheets for photography on Facebook a few weeks ago and rusty, scratched cookie sheets have been showing up in little corners of my life ever since.
Sometimes recipes arrive via email, and most of the time that’s because I’ve completely harassed the sender for the recipe of the lunch that they had on the day that I was stalking their meal in the work lunch room. Not creepy at all. I just sit on my side of the table and secretly eye everyone’s lunch containers as they spoon the food into their mouths. WHO AM I.
I’ve gotten recipes as magazine clippings, cookbook page photocopies (…uhh, illegal? oh my gosh, never thought about that before), and my favorite – handwritten collections of recipes stapled together in a mini-book. Every once in a while I’ll even get a newspaper article about great restaurants or local food news sent to me via snail mail, because I have the most thoughtful in-laws in the world.
I also like to talk (as people know) and I like food (as people really know), so sometimes people I barely know will strike up a little conversation with me about the best spaghetti and meatballs they made last night and what wine to serve it with and how much garlic they put on the bread and specifically how to best reheat the leftovers. Is that the best thing to talk about or what? I love that I am targeted for these kinds of conversations.
THANK YOU, food blog life, for letting this happen to me all the time.
So here’s the scoop-de-doop with the green rice.
It’s a Mexican rice of sorts, being that we’re using cilantro and hot peppers and garlic to bump up the green flavor. The flavor is really mild, though, so if you’re going for HOTTIE hot, I would add another pepper. It reminds me a lot of Mexican rice, except it’s green. Or fried rice, but with Mexican flavors. Or the best rice ever, except THE BEST RICE EVER.
I tried to keep the oil under control while still using enough to get that great texture – the amount of oil ends up being only a little spoonful per serving and it adds so much to the rice in both flavor and texture. You saute the uncooked rice in the oil, and then you cook it up with the green spinach, cilantro, pepper, and garlic puree. It’s so fluffy and it can go with anything. Did I already say that?
Here are some ideas for serving it up:
- with Grilled Chicken
- with Coconut Lime Chicken
- with Grilled Shrimp
- stuffed in Tacos
- stuffed in Burritos
- sprinkled on Nachos
- with Chips – been there done that
- with Fried Plantains like these totally drool-worthy Garlic Tostones – similar to what you see pictured.
I see visions of this versatile, simple rice all over my summer. Pop some food on the grill, cook this fluffy Mexican rice up in all it’s green glory, make some fresh guacamole, and you’ve got yourself a shnazzy fresh summer meal. I am already so excited to make this for parties and get-together and grill outs and for meeee to eeeeat.
Coming in hot –>
Green Mexican Rice with Corn
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 8 1x
Description
This Green Mexican Rice with Corn is made with spinach, jalapeno, garlic, and cilantro, and it goes perfectly with anything!
Ingredients
- 2 cups spinach
- 1/2 cup or more cilantro leaves
- 1 jalapeno or serrano pepper
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 2 cups long grain white rice
- 3 cups water
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (more to taste)
- 1 cup corn
Instructions
- Pulse the spinach, cilantro, pepper, and garlic in a food processor until very finely chopped (almost like a paste).
- Heat the oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Add the rice and stir continuously for 5-8 minutes, until the rice is starting to turn light golden brown. Add the water, salt, corn, and green paste from step one. Cover and boil for 5 minutes. Stir, replace cover, and lower the heat to simmer for another 10-20 minutes or until the rice is soft and fluffy. Serve with additional salt, cilantro leaves, and lime if desired.
Notes
This goes really well with grilled chicken, grilled shrimp, fried plantains, spicy beans, in burritos and tacos, or straight up on tortilla chips. YUMMY.
For the fried plantains recipe, try these Garlic Tostones. My fave!
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 35 mins
- Category: Side Dish
- Cuisine: Mexican
Keywords: green mexican rice, mexican rice, rice with corn
Thanks for being my favorite blog peepsters! Now off to Green Mexican Rice land.
I have an abundance of dino kale in my garden right now. Think I could sub it for the spinach? Would the flavor be too strong? Thank you!
I love this recipe! Have made it a couple of times so far. I do not put the vegetables in a food processor. I just chop them up – mince the garlic. I used olive oil instead. Canola oil is not good for us. I also used long grain brown rice and bought my organic frozen corn at Trader Joe’s. I did use lime. That is the only changes I made.
Absolutely delicious. Will make again. I cut corn from the cob and microwaved till al dente and added it to the rice after it was cooked. So good.
I made this for dinner tonight and both of us loved it! I fried some plantains like you did and put them on top as well as some crispy jalapeno pieces. Delicious! I’ll definitely make it again. It’s a great way to use up half a bunch of cilantro or some spinach wilting in the fridge.
Sounds delicious, Sam!
Omg this rice is amazing…I made with some leftover brown rice and stir fried with the green paste and added corn..was so delicious!
Hi, just discovered your site and it all looks delicious! Does this recipe use frozen or fresh corn? Thank you!
You could do either – fresh would be best!
I tried this recipe tonight and it came out great!!! It was a really easy recipe. I will definitely make this again.
Hi … tried this recipe last night … only difference was i added onion with the oil and rice … was YUMMY!!! Thanks for sharing!!!!
I made this for dinner tonight to go with shrimp tacos for the meat eaters and crispy tofu tacos for me. It was absolutely delicious. The only thing I did differently from your recipe was to use veggie broth instead of water. Thanks for a great recipe that I will definitely make again.
Glad to hear that, Vivian!
Let me try with this recipe and will definitely know you the result. Anyways goahead and place more recipes in this site.
I just made this for dinner it is delicious I just add shredded chicken because I have to have my protein and came out really good thanks for the recipe
Glad to hear that, Glenda! I bet the chicken was delicious in there. 🙂
Made this last night and I absolutely loved it! The only modification I made was to add about half a diced onion in with the rice while it was browning in oil. I also juiced one lime in the rice before serving. Delicious!! At dinnertime I realized I was actually enjoying THREE of your recipes in one meal. This rice, your shredded chipotle chicken on top (a regular for me), and I drizzled magic green sauce I had leftover from the weekend on top. Soooo flavorful. I am looking forward to these leftovers for the rest of the week!
That’s great to hear, Julie! Love the addition of the onion and lime – yum!
Hi! So I made this exact recipe but with brown rice and it was tasteless! Is the type of rice the issue?
Hm, there’s a lot of herbs and garlic in there so I’m really surprised it would be tasteless. And brown rice should be fine – I mean, it has more of its own taste than white rice does but it shouldn’t affect the taste of the herbs and chilis and garlic. But maybe a higher herb-to-rice ratio would be helpful next time?
Great recipe – rice was fantastic!
We ,are this tonight-both the rice and the plantains and both super delicioso. I’ve never made plantains before, but wow-so good! Not sure sure about the health benefits with frying but-hey-you gotta live al little, right?! 😉
We drizzled honey over the rice mixture which was pretty tasty,
Hahaha my thoughts exactly Bekah!
I have never heard of green Mexican rice, but now I want to make this today! Thank you for sharing this recipe!
The rice stuck like crazy for me when I was first browning it. It cooked a little quicker than I expected it to, but I suppose every burner is different. A little splash of lime juice mixed in added to this dish.
Hm, stuck even with the oil? Were you stirring it? It should be pretty oily during that first step which would prevent it from sticking. Love the addition of lime!
I don’t think I put enough oil in at first, so it had a chance to stick to the pan. Then I added more as I went. I was definitely stirring it; my arm was pretty tired by the time I was done. I ate the rice cold for the rest of the week and added feta cheese to give it some saltiness, yum!
I LOVE the look of this rice – holy yummy batman! Sometimes I’m extra lazy, and I’ll do the sauté step in a pan, then toss everything in my rice cooker to finish, so I don’t have to even think about how long something is going to take. I’d be tempted to give that a try for this recipe (because I have the attention span of an insect and always end up having my rice gluey).
I am always looking for new mexican rice recipe! Thanks for sharing!
Oh, I am a little jealous of people giving you food props. I mean, I “borrow” them from family, but maybe I need to expand my horizons 🙂 We made fried plantains once but it was a disaster, I think they were still unripe. Your pictures are making me want to try it again. Everything looks delicious!
I actually like the unripe ones better – these ones were pretty ripe and as a result they are a lot sweeter, almost like a fried banana vs. a fried potato.
Wow.. looks so yummy. I am Vegetarian and constantly look for something new that I can accommodate. Thanks for the recipe.
P.S. Here is a similar recipe of Mexican veg rice that I made last to last week. Let me know if you like it 🙂
https://werecipes.com/mexican-veg-fried-rice-recipe/
This looks soooo good! Fried plantains are a favorite in my house 🙂
I would guess from your blog name! 🙂
I am always looking for an easy and kind of different rice dish. I love the color of this one. Plus I don’t think I have every seen corn mixed with rice. But then I don’t get out much either. The corn offers an interesting mix to the texture. This is such a spring looking dish too. In the Pacific NW we are having an awesome spring, but it is overcast today. So I am leaning toward other bright things in life to shift my focus to. Of course it always waaaay too easy to shift my focus to food. Sigh.
This looks lovely! Sometimes I have trouble making light, fluffy rice but this looks perfect!
Thank you for this recipe! I can’t wait to try it.