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Spanish Rice
Boil cup rice, ten minutes. Fry in bacon fat or drippings, heaping tbsp., 1. onion and 1 green pepper till brown. Skin two tomatoes and mix with rice. Put all in doubleboiler for one hour, stirring occasionally. Salt to taste.
— Miss L. M. Ketcham
A community-cookbook Spanish rice from the era when the double boiler did the work of a covered oven. The method is sound, but the quantities are sketched rather than stated.
- The hinge: parboil, then steamThe rice is boiled only ten minutes so it finishes in the double boiler, absorbing tomato juice and fat over the full hour. Draining the parboiled rice well before it meets the fat keeps the finished dish loose rather than gluey.
- Quantities as written"Cup rice" means one cup of raw white rice. The "heaping tbsp." is the bacon fat or drippings; the onion and pepper are one each, chopped.
- TomatoesTwo skinned fresh tomatoes give roughly a cup of pulp, which is on the dry side for a cup of rice held an hour. A 14-oz can of diced tomatoes with their juice is the practical equivalent, and dropping the whole tomatoes in boiling water for 30 seconds loosens the skins if you go fresh.
- Double boiler timingAn hour over simmering water is not excessive here — the gentle heat is what keeps the rice from scorching in a heavy tomato mixture. Check at 40 minutes; if the rice is tender and the liquid gone, stop there.
- Without a double boilerA heavy lidded saucepan over the lowest burner, or a covered dish at 325F, does the same job in about 35-45 minutes. Stir once or twice either way.
- SeasoningSalt to taste is the only seasoning given. Black pepper, and a pinch of paprika or chili powder, bring it closer to what many now expect under the name.
- YieldServes four as a side dish, or two or three as a meatless main course.
"Spanish rice" in American cookbooks of the early twentieth century has little to do with Spain: rice browned in fat with onion, pepper and tomato, a dish usually associated with Mexican and Southwestern cooking and comparable to arroz a la mexicana. The name was applied loosely to almost any tomato-and-rice combination, and by the 1910s and 1920s it was a common thrift dish — cheap grain, a spoonful of saved bacon drippings, and whatever vegetables were on hand. The contributor's name attached to the recipe is typical of a community cookbook, in which members supplied household standbys and the book was sold to raise funds.