Saturday, June 27, 2009

Rice and Lake Charles Dirty Rice (Donald Link)

Here is the ingredients in the rice pot. Rice, water, bay leaves and very little salt. I was skeptical but I went with anyway.


Here is the finished product. In many restaurants today the people are trying to cut back on salt by not putting any in rice. This results in bland rice. Although I only put about an 1/16 (pinch) in this one it was delicious. I would have had some with butter if I had not needed all of it for the Dirty Rice. I will be making my rice with bay leaves from now on. It was sorta of an herbal backnote that I found pleasant.
Ingredient line up for Dirty Rice.


Mise en place

The ground pork and pureed chicken livers browning



Spices and seasoning into the skillet and cooked a bit


The cooked rice was added to that along with chicken stock and green onions and parsley. Finished product below. Nice spice level due to some jalapeno in the seasonings.

When I was growing up dirty rice was made with ground beef not only because my paternal grandfather ran cattle but because my mother had high blood pressure. Back in those days the common wisdom was that pork exacerbated the condition. So I rarely got to eat pork except when I went to my maternal aunt's and uncle's houses. Maybe that is why I like pork so much. Because it was such a treat for me. The procedure for this recipe gave a deep roasty toasty flavor to the final product. Since the liver was pureed it just added a richness in the background without being to livery. Good recipe with good directions.






1 comment:

Unknown said...

That is the way my mother showed me how to make dirty rice, people are always amazed by the flavor. i don't like chicken livers, but they have to be in there to make the taste right. I also use pork, it has the right flavor for this dish.

Great blog, a lot of useful information here. Keep it up.

Dick Gremillion