Mexican Rice Variety Dish

I love a dish that can be used for a variety of meals! How about you?!

I make this dish and sometimes even double it for my family and we have it a variety of different ways. Here is how to make the Mexican Rice Dish:

Mexican Rice Bowl

Ingredients:

1 cup cooked Ground beef or Turkey (or even diced cooked chicken)

1 cup cooked red or black beans, drained and rinsed

1 cup cooked long-grain brown rice

1/2 cup frozen whole kernel corn, thawed

1 medium tomato, diced (or red bell pepper)

1 small zucchini, diced

2 tbsp onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

Splash of Siracha Sauce (optional)

1/8 tsp ground chile powder

1/2 cup packed cilantro leaves, chopped

1 tsp olive oil

1/8 tsp sea salt

1/8 tsp ground black pepper

Olive oil cooking spray

Directions:
 In a large bowl, mix cooked ground turkey, cooked beans & cooked rice, corn, and tomatoes. Cook the zucchini, onion and garlic (and red bell pepper if doing instead of tomato) and cook in olive oil for a little bit to make tender. Add a splash of siracha sauce, chile powder, cilantro, oil, salt and black pepper. (Stuffing mixture can be prepared one day in advance and stored in a container in refrigerator, tightly covered with plastic wrap.)

Now for another way to use the dish:

Mexican Stuffed Peppers

• Mexican Rice Bowl recipe mixture
• 4 large poblano peppers (or 4 large sweet green or other colored bell peppers), seeded and cut in half
• 8 tbsp shredded reduced-fat Mexican cheese blend 4 tbsp low-fat sour cream 

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
2. Spray a large roasting pan with cooking spray. Mound 1/2 cup stuffing mixture into each poblano pepper half and place in roasting pan. Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle with Mexican cheese and bake for another 10 minutes.
3. To serve, top each stuffed pepper half with 1/2 tbsp plain yogurt. Serve immediately. 

You can cut and seed the peppers and then boil them for a few minutes until tender.  Just so the cook time wouldn't be so long.  Also, make sure that you leave time to cook the long grain brown rice.  It takes an hour to cook!!  You can make it the night before!  Also, you can add some tomato sauce instead of Siracha to give it some juice as well! 

Our family loves this meal and have even added it on top of Nachos using whole grain tortilla chips & shredded cheese. Melt and add the Mexican Rice mixture warmed up on top!

Hope you enjoy this recipe!

Thanks for checking in,

Melissa