Hi everyone and welcome back to Tasting My Heritage. For those of you that might be new here, I created a site where I can have my own digital recipe book so I can follow it later in life. My father is from Pakistan and my mom is from Jamaica. Growing up, I was given a lot of different foods to taste and enjoy, as they both are great cooks and always made foods from their countries for me. As a kid, I was mostly given Pakistani food, which is where my father is from. It’s something that I eat more often and therefore I have more information on it. In 2018, I even went to Pakistan. For a 13 year old girl, that was an amazing experience and I was able to really see my own culture and meet so many relatives. Along with this, I was able to try so many foods that I grew up having in a different way. Pakistan is very different from the United States and although the spices are similar, foods made in Pakistan were of course more authentic. When my mom and dad would make Pakistani food for my sister and I, we were given a different version. Our version wasn’t as spicy but it definitely still had some kick to it. The point of this story is to say that I’m more familiar with Pakistani food and this week as we venture back to Jamaica, I feel excited to create a new recipe because I didn’t eat this kind of food as much in my childhood. We had Jamaican food sometimes, but the majority of the time, it was Pakistani food.
This week, I’m going to show you how to make rice and peas! It’s important to note that the “peas” in rice and peas are actually just kidney beans… so don’t be alarmed! This is a very exciting one for me because I also ate a lot of rice as a kid while eating Pakistani food. This is a twist on something I enjoy eating and it’s a fairly simple recipe. This will be made using my aroma rice cooker and I had enough to enjoy this for about four days. You could also make this recipe over the stove, but we live in a more advanced world now, so if you eat rice a lot, or everyday, you should really invest in a rice cooker! Mine was only twenty dollars on Amazon.
Let’s get started with the recipe!
Ingredients:
- Three cups of basmati rice
- Three cups of water
- A tablespoon of minced garlic or two cloves of fresh garlic if you have some
- Goya dark kidney beans (this is the most authentic caribbean brand to use but any kind of dark kidney beans will do)
- Two pieces of green onions or scallions
- Classic coconut milk (you could use unsweetened coconut milk as well)
- Salt to taste
- Black pepper to taste
- Onion powder to taste
- Garlic powder to taste
Step one: Start with three cups of basmati rice and pour that into your rice cooker pot. Wash your rice thoroughly, making sure to drain the excess water out completely. I like to rinse my rice at least two times before adding the actual water that’s needed to cook it.
Step two: Add about three cups of water to your rice cooker.
Step three: Add about two and a half cups of classic coconut milk. The objective for the liquid to rice ratio is for it to be about a cup more liquid than cups of rice. Keep in mind, we’ll be adding our kidney beans, meaning we’ll need to account for a little more liquid.
Step four: Open your can of dark kidney beans. Rinse it in warm water and drain. Use the entire can. I only needed one because my rice cooker is fairly small, but use as many as you’d like. Add your dark kidney beans to the rice cooker pot.
Step five: Once everything is in there, you’ll want to mix it up a bit. Nothing crazy, this step is just to make sure the rice and beans are submerged in the coconut milk and water mixture.
Step six: Add your seasonings in. I added all of these to taste. Salt, black pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder. I was fairly generous with every seasoning since it’s rice AND beans that we want to make sure get seasoned. I would just be careful with the salt, it’s better not to accidentally overdo it with that.
Step seven: Now, you want to add a tablespoon of minced garlic. This is just to enhance the flavor. You can use actual garlic if you choose.
Step eight: Get about three long pieces of your green onions. Cut each piece up into three. This means you’ll have nine short pieces of green onion. Add that on top of your mixture. This won’t stay in the pot after you cook it. Don’t eat it. You can if you’d like, but it’s more so to strengthen the flavors of the rice and peas.
Step nine: Put your rice cooker to the “cook” setting. Mine usually cooks for half an hour and goes to “warm” whenever it’s ready. Once it’s done, remove the green onions from on top and mix all of your rice and peas together so that the flavors really marinate.
Step ten: Enjoy your delicious rice and peas. Serve it as a side with jerk chicken!