Rice. It’s my favorite carbohydrate (which is saying a lot, considering what a bread and pasta fiend I am), and it’s infinitely versatile. While we’ve done plenty of rice dishes in the past, from fried rice to sticky rice rolls, we haven’t talked much about how you can make different types of flavored rice.
Flavoring rice often just involves changing up the liquid that you use to cook it. While we regularly use water to cook rice, you can use different types of stock to make, say, chicken-flavored rice or mushroom flavored rice.
Today, we’re doing coconut rice. I really like making coconut rice to serve with Malaysian, Thai, Lao, and other Southeast Asian dishes.
It has a very light coconutty (which spell check says isn’t a real word) fragrance, and is slightly sweet. With the addition of toasted coconut flakes (required—don’t be tempted to leave them out!), it’s the perfect side dish. Plus, it only requires five ingredients!
I recently served coconut rice with my Pork Larb recipe, which I posted a few days ago, but below, I also include other recipes that could use a big pile of coconut rice on the side.
Coconut Rice: Recipe Instructions
Soak the jasmine rice in water for 15 minutes.
Drain.
Add the drained rice to a medium pot. In a 2-4 cup capacity wet measuring cup, pour in the can of coconut milk, and then add water until you hit just under 2 cups of liquid total. Add to the pot, along with the sugar and salt.
Put the pan on the stove and bring to a boil. Once boiling, immediately give the pot a stir, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Cook until all the liquid has been absorbed, about 25 minutes. Remove from heat, fluff the rice with a fork, and keep covered until ready to serve.
Just before serving, stir in the toasted coconut flakes.
Okay, as promised, things that go well with this coconut rice include:
I remember the first time I had beef rendang. I was about eleven years old and it was one of the most amazing things I’d ever eaten and coconut rice makes it even better
There are a select few really good meals in this world that take just 10 minutes to prepare from start to finish and this Thai Basil Chicken is one of them!
Pork Larb is a meat salad from Laos that has made its way into Thailand and other areas of Southeast Asia and is simply delicious and refreshing!
Thai basil beef (aka pad graw prow). The dish I order almost every time I set foot in a Thai restaurant – with coconut rice, of course, and one of my favorite things to cook at home.
I love this green curry chicken, because it’s one of those useful fridge-cleaning recipes. Coconut rice really enhances the flavor for the green curry in this dish. 