Toasty vermicelli! Honestly, I go a little overboard with the amount of vermicelli I add to my Lebanese rice. In fact, I should probably be calling this Arabic rice as it’s known across so many Middle Eastern countries with various names, like Masri rice etc. It’s one of my favorite rice dishes of all time right alongside mujadara. It starts with dry vermicelli pasta that we’ll toast in ghee to give it that beautiful golden brown color. Then I add in the rinsed rice and let it cook in the ghee until it’s translucent and starts to pop just a bit. In goes, twice the amount of chicken stock as the rice and we let the rice cook and simmer until the water is absorbed. Then just fluff with a fork and serve it alongside homemade kafta, grilled chicken skewers, in beef shawarma bowls with lots of toum, with lentil or okra stew, hummus, baba ganoush, or with Shirazi salad. Top Lebanese rice with just some chopped parsley or you can add toasted pine nuts or slivered almonds as well. I almost always have vermicelli rice in my refrigerator because it’s just so delicious and pairs beautifully with so many dishes.
Ingredients for Middle Eastern Rice:
Long grain white rice: The first thing you need to know is that for this recipe, we’re going to use a 1:2 ratio of rice to liquid. So if you’re making 1 cup of rice, you’ll use two cups of liquid. The second thing is that you want to rinse your rice under cold running water to get rid of as much starch as possible. Keep in mind that you can use regular long grain rice, basmati rice or parboiled rice for this recipe. The only thing you’ll need to do if you use parboiled rice, is cut the liquid back up 1/4 cup to make sure it all absorbs in the same amount of time. For this recipe, you can skip soaking the rice, there’s no need! I know, I’m usually one that talks about always soaking your basmati rice, but you can get away with it for this recipe.Ghee: I use ghee to toast the vermicelli in for middle eastern rice. You could also use a combination of butter and olive oil if you’d like, or you can use all olive oil if you prefer. Ghee just gives the rice an extra luxurious flavor. Vermicelli Noodles: I find vermicelli pasta very easily in my middle eastern grocery store. Most mainstream grocery stores do carry boxed of broken vermicelli as well. You can also use Fideo pasta in place of vermicelli or simply order it online.Chicken Broth/stock: I like to use chicken stock or broth to boil the rice. I feel it gives the rice a ton more flavor than just using water. I use low sodium chicken stock to ensure the rice isn’t too salty, but feel free to use water or vegetable stock instead to keep this recipe vegetarian-friendly.Kosher salt: Since I use low sodium chicken broth, I like to add 1/4 teaspoon salt to make sure the rice is properly salted.
How to make Lebanese Rice Recipe:
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Liquid: If you use water instead of broth/stock, you will need to up the salt in the recipe to make up for the sodium you’d be missing from the stock.
