Home › Poultry and Left-over Meats › Baked Rice and Meat
Baked Rice and Meat
1 cup canned tomatoes, 1 tablespoon Worcestersalt and pepper ½ cup rice 2 tablespoons butter shire sauce 2 medium-sized onions Cook the meat, which has been cut in cubes, stock, tomatoes, one of the onions cut fine, Worcestershire Sauce and seasonings together for about ten minutes. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the onion and uncooked rice. Allow both to brown slightly and add them to the other mixture. Turn all into a buttered casserole and bake 40 minutes. 2 cups chopped, cooked meat
The ingredient list has been scrambled by the book's two-column layout, so read it alongside the method before shopping. Reassembled, it calls for 2 cups chopped cooked meat, 1 cup canned tomatoes, ½ cup rice, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, 2 medium onions, and salt and pepper.
- The missing stockThe method calls for stock but the ingredient list never quantifies it. Rice at ½ cup dry needs roughly 1 to 1¼ cups of liquid beyond the tomatoes to cook through in a covered dish; use about a cup of beef or chicken stock.
- "Casserole" hereThe word means the baking dish itself, not a stovetop pan: the recipe says to turn everything into a buttered casserole and bake it. A 1½-quart lidded dish suits these quantities; covering it helps keep the top layer of rice from staying hard.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given, which was normal when ranges had no thermometers. Bake at 350F for the stated 40 minutes, then check that the rice is tender and the liquid absorbed.
- Rice typeA plain white rice is the likely assumption, though the recipe does not say. Converted or parboiled rice will want a little more liquid and time; brown rice will not cook in 40 minutes.
- Browning the riceFrying the uncooked rice with the second onion in butter helps keep the grains separate and adds a nutty flavour. Take it to pale gold rather than dark.
- The ten-minute simmerThat first simmer is only to bring the tomato, onion and seasoning together and warm already-cooked meat. Do not extend it hoping to tenderise the meat further; leftover roast simply dries out.
- YieldServes four as a main course, or six alongside a vegetable. It reheats well, though the rice tightens; add a spoonful of stock.
Baked rice and meat belongs to the large family of dishes American cookbooks of the early twentieth century built around the previous day's roast. Home economics writing of the period treated the reuse of cooked meat as a household virtue, and rice, tomatoes and onions were cheap, shelf-stable staples that could stretch two cupfuls of beef or lamb into dinner for four. The Worcestershire sauce supplies some of the savoury depth that already-cooked meat has lost; bottled sauces were common pantry items by this date and recipes leaned on them.