Aromatic, fluffy, and loaded with such good flavor. Mexican rice that’s just like your favorite Mexican restaurant. We start by blending together fresh tomatoes, a bouillon cube, tomato paste, onions, garlic, ground cumin, and a packet of sazon to make a homemade tomato sauce. Then we’ll saute the rice and let it cook in this mixture until the rice is fluffy and perfect. You won’t believe how good this rice is with Chile Colorado, shrimp enchiladas, chicken enchiladas, chicken carnitas, or in burrito bowls/ taco bowls topped with homemade pico de gallo, homemade salsa, chicken fajitas, steak fajitas, carne asada, with lots of guacamole salsa, and refried black beans.
Ingredients for easy Mexican rice recipe:
Rice: I like to use long grain white rice for this recipe. I haven’t tested the recipe with brown rice, but I suspect it could be done with additional water and time.Chicken Bouillon: You can also use chicken broth instead of the water and bouillon if you wanted. But I find the additional flavors in a bouillon cube make the rice even tastier! You can use vegetable bouillon here to make the recipe vegetarian-friendly. Roma Tomatoes: Fresh tomatoes are blended with water and a few other ingredients to create a homemade tomato sauce.Tomato paste: adds a more concentrated tomato flavor to the rice.Sazon and Seasonings: the Sazon seasoning I use is the culantro and achiote kind. Achiote or annatto adds natural color to the rice to make it look like that signature rice you get from your favorite Mexican restaurant! You can find this seasoning online as well as in the international aisle of many mainstream grocery stores. We’ll also use a pinch of ground cumin for smokiness and kosher salt.Onions:Chopped onions add to the aroma.Garlic: Adds aroma and flavor like the onions.Oil: We’ll use oil to saute the rice for a good 10 minutes before we let it simmer and boil in the homemade tomato sauce.Serrano pepper: This is optional, but I love to slit a pepper down the center and tuck it into the rice while it simmers and cooks. The serrano pepper adds a teeny tiny bit of heat but it’s mostly for the aroma!Other add-ins: Many restaurants add frozen peas, carrots, and celery to their Mexican-style rice. After testing this recipe tons of times, I decided to leave this out. Though my favorite restaurant does add small specks of carrots and celery, I wanted to make this without it and just mention this is something you can do if you’d like! I would add the veggies during the last 3 minutes of sauteing the rice and then let them boil with the rice to cook them through.
How to make fluffy Mexican rice:
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